Miss Mary's Book of Dreams

by Sophie Nicholls

  Grace waved her spoon at Bryony. ‘More?’ she said.

  Bryony smiled. ‘Of course, sweetheart.’ She guided Grace’s chubby fist towards the mug and smiled at Ella. ‘Why don’t you read it to me? If that’s all right?’

  ‘OK. Here we go. This is what Dr Wythenshawe wrote: At first, I was merely curious about this crone, and thought it might be useful to gather information about her so that I might teach others the evils of her ways. But she was such a small, pitiful thing, sitting there on the foul-smelling straw. There was something about her face, the pale cheeks and the mass of dark hair, which reminded me – God forgive me – of my eldest daughter.

  ‘I began to see that Mary – Miss Mary Cookson, as she first introduced herself to me with a little curtsey – had been much maligned by those whom she’d treated only with kindness. And the local doctor, a man about whom I can testify from my own bitter experience as being a drunk and a scoundrel, had only encouraged this ill-treatment, for he feared the loss of his income to Mary’s skills with herbs and healing plants.

  ‘I began to feel, as she sat there, quiet and unprotesting in her chains, that she had a heart that beat as good and fierce and godly in her breast as my own. It is my great regret that I could not save her from her fate, a fate I now firmly believe to have been thoroughly undeserved. I write her tale here in the hope that others will read of it and that other good wives and cure-wives in the future may be prevented from her suffering.’

  ‘Oh, that’s just awful,’ Bryony said, quietly. ‘And then they . . .’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘They hung her?’

  Ella nodded. ‘I think so. Yes.’

  She saw that Bryony’s eyes were brimming with tears.

  She thought of Clifford’s Tower, standing on its mound at the edge of the city, the place they’d have used as a lock-up, back then. She imagined the cold, dank cell and Mary’s wrists and ankles rubbed red and sore by iron chains. She imagined how she must have longed for the cold, clean air of the Moors again, those wild places where sheep grazed and where you could walk for days, seeing no one, talking only to the wind.

  ‘Poor Mary,’ Bryony said.

  ‘Who’s Mary?’ Grace said, instinctively snuggling closer, hoping for more chocolate.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Bryony. ‘You mentioned that your husband might know where Mary once lived. I’d like to see the place, get a sense of what it was like up there for her. Do you think it’s still there?’

  Ella shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’

  She felt the intensity of Bryony’s gaze.

  ‘You know,’ Bryony was saying. ‘It’s funny. I can’t explain why exactly, but I’m just so curious about her. And I don’t suppose . . . I mean, it’s probably a mad idea, but I don’t suppose you’d fancy coming with me? To try and find the cottage? Or, at least, where it used to be?’

  Ella felt the heat creep up her neck and into her face.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I don’t know if I could. I mean, I’m so busy with this place. It’s hard to get away, you know . . . with Grace and –’

  Bryony waved her hand. ‘No, no. Of course. Silly of me. And you’ve been more than kind already. I’ll probably head up there myself. And report back. If that’s OK?’

  Ella nodded. She was sure that her face must be bright red by now. Wasn’t she being a bit mean?

  ‘Yes. And you must come and tell us how you got on. I’m sure Billy would love to hear about it. You’ll have to come back when he’s around. Saturday lunchtime is usually a good time to catch him.’

  As Bryony crossed the courtyard and slipped out of sight, Ella felt the strange humming that had filled the air around her slowly begin to subside. It was bizarre, this physical reaction. She couldn’t make sense of it.

  ‘Mamma.’ Grace was pulling at her hand.

  ‘Yes, darling?’

  ‘She’s nice. I like that lady.’

  Ella smiled and smoothed Grace’s hair. ‘Yes, she’s very nice, isn’t she? Very kind.’

  8

  To invoke dream prophecies: Sew rose petals inside a conjure bag made of leaves or silk and wear it around the neck at night. In the morning, you must burn the bag outside to release any troublesome dream spirits.

  – Miss Mary’s Book of Dreams

  Fabia is falling and falling. She looks down between her bare feet and sees a blur of green and brown as the earth rushes up to meet her.

  She looks up and sees that the air above her is thick with birds, huge birds with red beaks and long green tail feathers, their emerald wings beating furiously, circling and swooping against the clouds.

  She hears a voice, Ella’s voice, from far away.

  ‘Mamma,’ she cries. ‘Mamma. Where are you?’

  Just before she hits the ground, she wakes up with a start. She lies for a long time, her eyes closed, watching the dream still moving over the translucent screen of her eyelids.

  *

  Fabia dropped a sugar lump into her cup and watched it dissolve. ‘I think I’m going to stop drinking coffee,’ she said.

  Over the rim of his mug, David’s eyebrows shot up. Fabia could see him making a valiant attempt to stifle a laugh.

  She smiled. ‘I know, I know. But I’m having these terrible dreams.’ She shuddered and pulled her robe more tightly around herself.

  Through the sliding glass doors, a warm October breeze played across the decking. She breathed deeply, the scent of salt and pine trees. The air seemed to tug at her, plucking at her sleeves, making her feel restless. She wondered if she’d ever get used to the weather here in California, where, it sometimes seemed to her, there were no seasons at all, just expanses of blue sky that went on forever.

  She thought of York and the way that the wind would be buffeting around the corners of the minster, sweeping in and out of the courtyard on Grape Lane, whirling litter and wet leaves in spirals. All the years she’d lived there, she’d hated the way that the cold seemed to reach right inside her clothes, making her bones feel as if they might snap at any moment. But now she found herself remembering wistfully the patterns made by the frost on the shop windows and the snow in the courtyard that muffled all sound so that it had sometimes felt as if she and Ella were floating, suspended in time, like tiny figures inside one of those glass snow globes.

  She wondered if Grace would already be wearing the little red coat with the horn buttons and the yellow mittens with the fake fur trim that she’d parcelled up and posted off just a week ago. In her mind’s eye, she imagined Grace, buttoned into the scarlet wool, kicking through drifts of leaves in the Museum Gardens, her cheeks flushed the colour of windfall apples. She must ask Ella to email her a picture.

  Then she thought of Maadar-Bozorg, standing at her apartment window in Tehran, drawing her winter shawl around her shoulders, watching the dusk fall thickly and silently and the city spreading itself below her on the other side of the glass.

  That familiar feeling uncurled itself from the pit of her stomach, cold and gelid.

  ‘What kind of dreams?’ David was watching her from across the table, his copy of the New York Times set aside and neatly folded by his plate.

  ‘Oh, you know. Just silly things, really.’ She pressed her lips together and tried to keep the quiver out of her voice.

  David’s hand was warm and firm on hers. ‘Fabia, you’re missing them all. It’s completely normal. You need to get yourself a plane ticket. I’ve told you. It’s that simple. Just do it.’

  ‘I can’t believe how silly I’m being.’ Shivers of blue and silver, as if the air above David’s shoulder had begun to tremble like water. She gripped the edge of the table and pushed her chair back. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’

  David smiled. ‘Nothing that a nasty British Airways breakfast won’t sort. Trust me.’

  ‘But what about you? What will you do if I go?’

  ‘Me?’ The corners of David’s eyes crinkled in that way that s
he’d always loved. ‘Oh, no doubt I’ll survive.’ He grinned. ‘Might even get to watch some decent football and eat pizza until I explode.’ He patted his stomach and winked.

  *

  ‘Hola, chica!’

  Fabia elbowed open the door of Rosita’s shop, two takeaway cups of hot chocolate and a paper bag of churros balanced precariously between her hands.

  Rosita seized them with enthusiasm and set them down on the counter. The aroma of chocolate, nutmeg and chilli filled the shop.

  ‘From José. He wants to know why he hasn’t seen you in days.’

  The owner of the corner cafe took great pleasure in supplying his ‘two favourite ladies’ with a steady supply of the house speciality chocolate, fragrantly spiced. Today, he’d thrown in the churros, homemade twists of pastry glazed with burnt sugar. Rosita sank her teeth into one and sighed.

  ‘Heaven,’ she said, between mouthfuls, flakes of pastry dropping from her fingers. ‘Forgot to have breakfast again.’

  Fabia smiled. ‘I guessed as much. Your lights were still on when I left yesterday.’ She looked around the shop, admiring Rosita’s work. Every conceivable surface was hung with her creations. Garlands of coloured tin twinkled from the old beams. Rosita’s labours of love, the six-foot-tall mirrors framed in intricate tin lattices of branches, leaves, flowers and birds, leaned against the walls. The shelves spilled boxes of decorations – skulls with feathered eyelashes, owls with roses twined around their necks, birds of paradise perched on crescent moons – all cut and punched in tin and enamelled or glazed in vibrant colours.

  This was Rosita’s busiest time. She’d once told Fabia that she made seventy per cent of her profits during the holiday season. She’d been arriving at the shop before sunrise for weeks now. Every morning, when Fabia was opening up, Rosita’s canary-yellow pickup would be parked on the kerb outside and when she was closing, at six o’clock, she’d see Rosita’s lights still blazing from the back workshops where she turned the stacked sheets of metal into her fantastic creations.

  There were dark shadows under her friend’s eyes and, Fabia thought as she examined her now, she looked much too thin under her linen apron.

  ‘Rosita, I think you’re more than ready now,’ she said. ‘Everything looks incredible.’

  Rosita shook her head and took a large gulp of chocolate, her upper lip curling as the chilli hit the back of her throat. ‘Not quite. Still some candle-holders and pocket mirrors to finish. Those always sell like crazy. I want to make sure I have enough.’

  Fabia knew there was no use in protesting. She and Rosita were too much alike. And if Rosita had made up her mind that this was how it was, there’d be no convincing her otherwise.

  ‘So what I’m desperate to know,’ Fabia said, tapping the side of her nose, ‘is how your dinner went with Moises? And how was the dress?’

  ‘Oh, darling.’ Rosita’s cheeks dimpled. ‘It was absolute perrrr-fection.’ She set her chocolate down on the counter and did a little shimmy right there on the spot. ‘I felt a million dollars. The dress was amazing. I came down the stairs and Moises . . . Well, I swear his jaw just hit the floor. He hasn’t seen me look like that in years. I put my hair up like this.’ She demonstrated, twisting her black curls into a high French pleat, pulling a few strands around her face, fluttering her eyelashes. ‘And I wore the gold heels and the amber earrings. He was a pussycat, darling. I could have asked him for . . . for the moon.’ She picked up a decoration in the shape of a crescent moon trailing strands of tiny stars and dandled it from her fingers. ‘I swear he would have brought it to me right there, on a plate, in the middle of the restaurant so I could gobble it all up.’

  Fabia smiled. ‘A good evening, then?’

  Rosita laughed. ‘More than good, darling. It was just what we both needed. It was –’ She seemed to be searching among the coloured leaves and petals festooned from the ceiling for the right words. ‘It was magic.’

  Fabia heard the familiar whispers from the corners of the room and felt them flicker up her spine in blue and yellow. That dress with the panther-clasp belt. She’d known it would be just right. And she’d taken particularly special care with her embroidery of the words, unpicking the hem and hiding the phrases carefully inside, using her magnifying glass to make the stitches as tiny as possible, each word no bigger than the pips of a juicy Californian lemon, then hand-rolling and stitching the difficult silk jersey back into place so that Rosita’s sharp craftswoman’s eyes would not detect a thing.

  In the darkness, love reinvents itself, moves on velvet paws, stretches itself beyond the shadows . . .

  She didn’t know where those words had come from. She never really knew. She’d come to accept that this was how it was, each time she let her mind go quiet, contract to the tip of her needle. The words would form themselves easily behind her eyelids and then all she had to do was translate them into careful stitches, selecting the colours of the embroidery silk, letting her fingers move of their own accord: Love moves on velvet paws, stretches itself beyond the shadows, knows when to wait patiently, growing bigger with the waxing moon and when to leap, leap into the light . . .

  Over the last couple of years, she’d grown to love Rosita like a sister. And she liked Moises too. She wanted them to be happy.

  She’d watched them nurse Moises’s mother through cancer at the beginning of the year, and she suspected that they’d had some money worries too. Of course, Rosita would be far too proud to ever share that with her. And then there was Gabby, about whom she always seemed anxious. ‘It’s such a cut-throat world that she moves in,’ Rosita had once said, ‘and she’s so sweet, my girl, such an innocent. I worry that someone will take advantage of her.’

  Now Fabia hugged her friend, feeling the slenderness of her shoulders through her sweater.

  ‘I’m so pleased,’ she said. ‘And I have something to tell you too. I’ve decided to go. In time for Ella’s birthday. I managed to speak to Billy yesterday, whilst Ella was out. He was very enthusiastic about it. Says he’s sure she’d love to see me, that he’ll throw a special party, surprise her.’

  ‘Ah,’ Rosita smiled again. ‘This is good, darling. Very good. I wholeheartedly approve. She needs you. Even if you think she doesn’t. And don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep an eye on David for you, keep him out of mischief.’ She winked.

  They both knew that the chances of calm, sensible David indulging in mischief were about the same as those of Moises forgoing his Wednesday night poker game at the sports bar with the boys. No, what worried Fabia was that David would work too hard whilst she was gone.

  ‘Well, if you wouldn’t mind dropping by every now and then, just to remind him to, you know, eat.’

  ‘Consider it done. I’ll invite him over. I think he likes my tortillas, no? Don’t you worry, my darling. Just have a nice time.’

  Fabia took her friend’s hands in hers, turning them over, examining the black smudges and red indentations on each fingertip from her long hours working the tin.

  ‘And you,’ she said. ‘You take care of yourself. I’ll leave you the key to the shop. Try everything on. Borrow anything you want. And set another date with Moises. Bewitch him.’

  *

  ‘Your ring, Bry.’ Ed set his watering can down on the bench and took her hand in his. ‘You’ve lost it!’

  Bryony felt the heat in her cheeks. She pushed her hand into her skirt pocket. Thank goodness. It was still there.

  ‘Here it is.’ She held it up with a little flourish and it winked in the pale light. ‘Silly me. I took it off when I was washing up. Didn’t want to lose it down the plughole. I must have forgotten about it.’

  Ed’s face relaxed. ‘Right. S’pose it’s a good job I noticed.’ He picked up the watering can. ‘I’ve got the bulbs in, anyway. Lots of tulips. They’ll be lovely, come spring. I was just thinking about a cup of tea. Wondering where you’d got to . . .’

  ‘I went for one of my walks. You didn’
t see my note?’ Bryony hoped her face didn’t give her away. She’d always been a terrible liar.

  Ed shook his head. ‘I was cracking on. Out here. Trying to get things nice for you. You’ve been doing a lot of that recently, Bry.’

  ‘A lot of what?’

  ‘Walking.’

  ‘Yes, well, it’s good for me. Stops me thinking too much –’

  ‘Thinking? About what?’

  Ed’s eyes narrowed. He had very blue eyes. Some would say they were cold. In a weird way, they reminded Bryony of Selena’s.

  ‘Oh, you know. Stuff. All the stuff that it isn’t really that helpful for me to think about. I’ll go and put the kettle on, then.’

  ‘Right-o.’

  She set out mugs, began to warm the teapot.

  Outside, Ed began to sweep the yard. The sound of the brush against the stones went straight through her.

  It was funny, thought Bryony, how she’d lived with this person for a year, slept next to him every night and yet she realised that she really didn’t have a clue who he was. It was as if she was looking at him for the first time. The thought made the gap inside her open up again. She swallowed, poured water, fetched the milk from the fridge.

  It was all right. She was going to be all right.

  She took a breath, took it down deep into her stomach, in the way that Dr Murray had suggested she might find helpful. An image of the shop swam into her mind. The rows of bookcases. The little girl, Grace, playing in the corner, her pink cheeks and bobbing curls.

  Yes, she thought. It would be OK.

  Miss Mary’s words, the ones she’d read just that morning, drifted back to her:

  I am a simple woman . . .