Miss Mary's Book of Dreams

by Sophie Nicholls

  In fact, Billy had seen him a couple of years ago in the mini-market by the station, loading a basket with ready meals. According to Mrs Stubbs, he was living with his aging mother, running her errands, driving her around.

  Ella shivered. She could still see Pike’s face, pale with fury. She could still feel his touch. Those long white fingers and the smell of sour wine on his breath.

  And she remembered sitting here on this bed, just like this, as Mamma folded clothes and laid them carefully in a suitcase. What would have happened if they really had left York that night, running from the wagging tongues and the unkind words? What different turn would their lives have taken? For Mamma, there would have been no David and no move to California. And for her?

  Ella sighed. She’d been so young, her life still unfurling ahead of her like a roll of Mamma’s dressmaking silk. Back then, she’d been desperate to stay here, surrounded by the things she was growing to love. This city of solid stone walls and streets that twisted in on themselves. The river that flowed, brown and strong, through its centre. And, of course, Billy, the boy with the blue-grey eyes and the lopsided grin who had already claimed her heart. It had all seemed so simple back then.

  But now she felt a part of herself stretching into a new shape, yearning for something more. On certain days, the wind tugged at her hair and whispered in her ear: Ella, Ella, El-la . . . The Signals taunted her from the corner of the room and got inside her dreams: Sink or swim, they whispered. Sink or swim . . . At such times, the shop, her little family, and this small, safe city didn’t seem big enough to contain her dreams.

  She thought of how each of her parents had left their own homes and families in search of adventure. The same spirit of restlessness had kept them moving from place to place, until eventually they’d found each other and travelled from Paris to England together, their lives briefly but irrevocably swept along on the same tide. And Mamma was still moving, crossing countries and continents. She didn’t seem made to be still.

  But she, Ella, had always thought that she was different. As a child, drifting from one town to another, one flat to another, she’d longed for a place where she could pause and breathe for a moment, where she could stop being the strange, new girl with the funny accent and perhaps even make some friends. And that’s what she’d eventually found here with Billy and Grace and Happily Ever After. Her own space. Her own story. And however incomplete it was – the father she would never know, the things Mamma never talked about – it was her story. She had made it hers.

  But what if it wasn’t meant to last? Perhaps it was all an illusion anyway and people like her never did find themselves or came home to themselves or all those things that the books in the Popular Psychology section were always talking about.

  Here and there, among the rooftops, she could see the lights coming on in attic windows. There was the familiar clatter of the pigeons on the roof and, beyond that, the clang of metal against metal as the market traders dismantled their stands. The wind creaked and whistled in the guttering and the Minster bells began. Six o’clock. Evening service.

  Maadar-Bozorg’s woollen shawl was folded neatly over the end of the bed. She traced the intricately woven pattern, the colours soft under her fingers. She lifted it to her face and breathed in the scent – cinnamon and rose petals and something else, a faint smoky tang that was impossible to define.

  ‘It belonged to my grandmother,’ Maadar-Bozorg had said when Grace, sitting on her lap, had put out her hand to stroke it. ‘And when I was only a little bit older than you, Grace, she used to let me wrap myself in it in front of the fire as she told me stories. Sometimes it was a cloak that would give me magical powers and sometimes it became a magic carpet that could fly me wherever I wanted to go.’

  ‘And is that true?’ Mamma had said, her eyes glittering with mischief. ‘Is it magic?’

  ‘Well, of course! What a question!’ Maadar had held a corner of the shawl in front of Grace’s face. ‘Now you see her . . . and abracadabra. Now you don’t!’

  Grace’s laughter bounced around the room.

  Magic. Ella thought of the time when she’d searched this same room for Mamma’s mysterious box. Now she bent double on the edge of the bed and ran her fingers over the floorboards, feeling for the piece of board that would give under her fingertips. Yes, Mamma’s hiding place was still here. She prised up a corner of the board with her fingernail. Nothing. Just a dusty cavity containing a bit of crumpled tissue and a dead spider. What had she seriously expected to find?

  She stood up, smoothing the quilt, and gave Maadar-Bozorg’s pillow a gentle shake. That was when she saw it. It was sitting on the bedside table that Mamma had made when they’d first moved here by painting an old packing crate and draping it with a silk scarf. It gleamed in the dim light. The divining dish. She couldn’t resist picking it up and weighing it in her palm. Then she turned and glanced over her shoulder. The back of her neck prickled. She could have almost been certain that she’d heard footsteps behind her.

  From the very first moment that she’d seen the dish, she’d known exactly what she wanted to do. The question that she wanted to ask it had itched and niggled ever since.

  Now she separated the two halves and looked at the strange markings on the base. What did they mean? How could they be interpreted? Perhaps, if she just closed her eyes and let her mind go quiet?

  ‘You won’t find the answer to your question there, child.’

  Ella jumped.

  ‘Sorry. I – Gosh, you must think –’ She felt the familiar flush spread from the tips of her ears into her cheeks. Her fingers, still holding the dish, tingled. She pushed the two halves together again and put the dish back on the little crate-table, where it seemed to glow. It was almost as if it gave off its own soft light.

  Maadar-Bozorg stood in the doorway in the semi-darkness. Ella saw that her feet were bare, slender ankles protruding from her mannish flannel trousers, her toes perfectly painted with dark red varnish.

  ‘I’m sorry, Maadar-Bozorg. I wasn’t . . . I mean, I just came up here to see if there was anything you needed for the night. And then I started remembering things. You know. From when Mamma and I used to share this room.’ Ella reached up and drew the curtains closed. ‘And then I saw it.’ She nodded in the direction of the dish. ‘And I just couldn’t resist having another look. Something about it makes you want to pick it up.’

  Maadar-Bozorg smiled. ‘Absolutely. And I’ll show you how to use it, if you really want to know.’ She perched on the edge of the bed and swung her legs playfully.

  In the shadows, she looked almost seventeen, Ella thought. She had a brief glimpse of what Zohreh Jobrani must have been like as a young woman. The chiselled cheekbones, the almond-shaped eyes fringed with dark lashes, the long, proud nose.

  ‘Would you? Would you, really? I’d love that.’

  Maadar-Bozorg patted the bed beside her.

  ‘It’s terribly simple, of course, as these things often are when you know how.’

  Ella sat down next to her and Maadar-Bozorg passed her the dish.

  ‘So you take it in one hand . . . yes, just like that. Let it rest there.’ She nodded approvingly. ‘And now you must still your mind. Yes, that’s right.’

  Ella felt Maadar-Bozorg reaching for her in the darkness, her Signals unfurling red and blue and gold. ‘And then you must invite your question in, hold it in your mind, but very lightly. Ye-es, careful now. That’s it . . .’

  Ella shifted position on the bed.

  ‘And now you can take your divining substance, whatever that might be. Let’s see. What can we use?’

  Ella pushed her hand into her jeans pocket and drew out a paper sachet of sugar, the kind she kept in a little dish in the cafe corner. ‘Will this do?’

  ‘Ah, yes. Perfect.’ Maadar-Bozorg smiled again. ‘And quite relevant, don’t you think? Because in matters of the heart, a little extra sweetness never goes amiss.’

  She
knows exactly what my question is, Ella thought. She felt herself blush again and looked down as Maadar-Bozorg’s warm hand cupped her own, steadying the dish.

  ‘So now, keeping it perfectly level, you take a little pinch of your sugar and blow it in through this hole in the lid, here. That’s right.’

  Maadar-Bozorg’s eyes never left her face as Ella bent over the dish and gently blew.

  ‘Good. And now, child, all you need to do is open it up again and read what the dish has to tell you.’

  ‘But that’s just it.’ Ella weighed the dish in her hand. She hardly dared lift the lid and look inside. ‘How will I know what it means?’

  ‘Go on.’ Maadar-Bozorg nodded. ‘First things first, child. Open it. Then tell me what you see.’

  Ella’s fingers fumbled with the tiny catch. She laid the lid on the bed and, very carefully, so as not to disturb the contents, she held out the dish.

  ‘No, child. No point showing me. You are the diviner. You must read the sign.’

  ‘But I don’t know how.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do.’

  Ella glanced down. At first, all she saw was a plume of sugar, the white crystals arranged in a perfect arc, like a little half-moon. ‘Well, it reminds me of a moon, I suppose,’ she said. This was stupid. Why was she wasting time like this?

  ‘I know. I know. You’re wishing you’d never even started it. That it’s a load of old mumbo-jumbo.’ Maadar-Bozorg’s eyes twinkled. ‘And of course, you’re partly right. It is. But, you see, there’s nothing here to be afraid of. It’s like the cards or the runes or the casting board. They can only tell you what’s there already.’ Maadar-Bozorg tapped the side of her head with a jewelled finger. ‘In here, child. In your subconscious mind. These are all simply tools that help us to tap into our mind’s amazing power. That’s what magic really is. In one sense, anyway.’

  Ella looked down again. She noticed now how the little crescent moon shape crossed two of the quadrants engraved on the dish, east to west. As if the moon was rising, waxing towards fullness, caught halfway between one thing and another. A bit like Billy and me, she thought. We don’t know if we’re one thing or another. We were children together and now, now we’re . . . What, exactly? Grace’s parents? Owners of a bookshop? A series of images flashed through her mind. Billy prancing around Mamma’s old shop, flourishing an embroidered shawl like a toreador, leaning on a parasol and making a deep mock bow, winking at her from behind a Venetian mask. Billy lolling in the grass by the river. Billy’s face looming down at her angrily from where she lay on her back on the diving platform, clutching at her ribs, rolling with laughter. And Billy on the bridge, his face half hidden by darkness, leaning in for that first kiss.

  It’s as if we’ve lost all that, what we once were together, she thought. And again she felt that big black gap opening up inside her. It was as cold as the river water, fast and strong, and it threatened to sweep her away. Always, when she’d felt like this before, it had been Billy who’d come to her rescue. He always knew what to say, how to make her smile. But this time . . .

  She looked down again at the miniature waxing moon of sugar. What will we become, she thought? What are we moving towards?

  And almost instantly she heard a voice in her head answering.

  Something new, it said. The past is gone. You can’t relive it. You’re moving towards something else.

  ‘Does that answer your question?’ Maadar-Bozorg’s voice, its rich lilt, broke into her thoughts.

  Ella looked up. Her voice caught in her throat. ‘Yes. Well, sort of.’

  Maadar-Bozorg’s hand, her slender, brown fingers, the skin loose around the knuckles, covered her own.

  ‘Child, the best answers are always full of questions. And it’s the questions that take us where we need to go next.’

  21

  To ask for an answer: Look at the moon in a mirror and ask it the question for which you desire an answer. You must not look at the moon directly.

  – Miss Mary’s Book of Dreams

  Fabia sat on the edge of the sofa in the old living room above the shop, holding the photograph of her mother – her birth mother – in both hands. So many times since she was a tiny girl in a white cotton nightdress perched on the end of her bed, she’d scrutinised this same face, and yet the woman behind the glass still remained a mystery. The enormous dark eyes, half turning from the camera, the high cheekbones and slender throat. She’d carried the photograph with her everywhere in its plain silver frame, from her bedroom in Tehran to the boarding house in Paris where she’d propped it against the wall in her corner of the shared attic dormitory. Since then, it had journeyed with her to England, and eventually to York, at the bottom of her suitcase, carefully wrapped in a silk scarf. Those dark eyes had gazed out at her from her bedside table in the little flat she’d shared with Enzo as a newly married woman. And as she and Ella had moved from place to place, in those early years after Enzo’s death, her mother had accompanied them, her slightly blurred half-smile hovering at the corners of her mouth.

  But when she and David had set out for their life in California, Fabia had finally decided to leave her mother behind. It had seemed symbolic of her new beginning, the right thing to do, and so the photograph had presided here, half forgotten, on the mantelpiece in the tiny living room above the shop.

  Now the room was crowded with Ella’s large desk and printer, enormous boxes full of books and a shelf of meticulously labelled box files. That was Ella, through and through, Fabia thought. Her daughter had always been extremely organised but she’d never had much interest in interior design. She’d far rather sit with her nose buried in a book than waste time arranging things in a way that was more pleasing to the eye. It had made Fabia a little sad at first to see their former home this way, the lamps and trinkets swept aside to make way for accounting. But then she’d sat here this evening, and the past had come slowly seeping back. She’d reached out and clicked on a reading lamp and memories had spilled from it, pooling like the light on the rug at her feet. It was still here, her past, in the weave of the yellow silk curtains and the ridges of paint on the skirting boards that she’d prepared so hastily all those years ago.

  She leaned in the kitchen doorway, the photograph still in her hands. She could see the ghosts of their former selves – hers and Ella’s – so clearly here, sitting at the kitchen table. She reached out and traced the grooves worn in the wood. This was where she’d cut her fabrics, late at night when Ella was sleeping. She heard again the whisper of satin crepe, the rasp of cotton, felt them slipping through her fingers. She saw Ella at fourteen in her navy-blue school uniform, her wild brown hair tangling around her shoulders, a book propped against the coffee pot as she nibbled at a slice of toast. She smiled to see her own younger self, dancing around the kitchen to the radio: When the moon hits your eye . . . hmm, hmm-hmm, hmm hmm-hmm . . .

  Because, of course, this was where she’d met David. He’d sat right here on that first night, his doctor’s bag placed carefully in front of him, writing out a prescription in his beautiful, flowing handwriting.

  ‘Delicious coffee,’ he’d said, sipping at the cup she’d set in front of him and she’d known right then, as she’d watched him drink, that this was a man with whom she could fall in love.

  Now she placed the photograph of her mother in the centre of the table.

  ‘So what next?’ she said, out loud to the black-and-white image. ‘What’s next for me?’

  The large dark eyes gazed back at her, unwavering.

  ‘Ah, yes. She was ziba, no?’ Maadar-Bozorg’s voice was soft, mellifluous, lingering over the consonants in the Old Language, which Fabia barely spoke these days

  ‘Maadar. I thought you were sleeping.’

  ‘Just resting my eyes, child.’ The green eyes glinted. ‘But, yes, she was beautiful, your mother, no? And restless too. Always drifting from place to place, looking for something she never quite found. That was the hardest part
for me, watching her do that.’

  Fabia scraped back a chair. ‘Please, Maadar-Bozorg, sit with me a while?’ Her fingertips moved over the table, seeking out the score marks and little pitted places in its surface. She felt a long, sad sigh rise up from somewhere deep inside her and hang like a blue mist in the room.

  ‘Maadar-Bozorg, will you tell me about my mother?’

  ‘Of course, child. But where shall I begin? What do you want to know?’

  Fabia looked into the face of the woman who had always cared for her as her own daughter. Suddenly, she felt shy, awkward. After all this time, the truth was that she didn’t really know what she wanted to know. And perhaps it would hurt Maadar-Bozorg to hear the eagerness in her voice, to know how much she wanted to connect to this other woman who had always seemed to move through the background of her life like the vaguest of shadows.

  ‘Maadar-Bozorg, do you remember how, when I was a little girl, you took me into the hills outside Tehran, to that place where you can look down on the entire city? We stood and watched the cars and the people moving around far below us and you told me that my mother was there, right there, all around me, in that big, old tree and in the air that I breathed, and the earth under my feet? Do you remember that?’

  Maadar-Bozorg smiled. ‘Something like that, yes. Perhaps it was wrong of me. Maybe I should have been less . . . less poetic. These days, I think they advise that children who have been bereaved need more direct answers.’

  ‘No.’ Fabia shook her head. ‘What you told me helped me a great deal. It meant that I could feel that my mother hadn’t left me, that if I closed my eyes, she was here with me, right here.’ Fabia pressed her palm to the centre of her chest. ‘Aunt Talayeh told me that my mother was with God. I couldn’t even begin to imagine where that was or what it meant. But what you said helped me to feel her. And that was very important, somehow. I understood that she was gone, that she wasn’t coming back, but I also felt that I had a piece of her right here, inside me.’