by E M Graham
I waited a moment to let her think this through.
‘You have to help me, Alice,’ I urged. ‘I don’t have anyone else.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow evening, just over on the west end of Duckworth Street,’ I said, relaxing now. ‘We can ride our bikes over.’
I hugged her through the thickness of her parka and she slipped away from my clutch like a scalded cat. Alice really was the best friend ever.
9
THE KITCHEN WINDOWS were all steamy from the boiling pasta, and the smell of Mark’s Bolognese sauce hit me like a solid wall when I let myself into the house. I was ravenous.
‘You got garlic toast coming with that?’ I shrugged my jacket off and slipped it over the back of the chair and sat down.
‘Maybe even with cheese grilled over it,’ Mark said as he looked up from the stove, then he shook the wooden spoon at me. ‘But only if you hang that coat up where it belongs.’
I groaned but stood up again, retracing my steps to the back porch with its hooks overflowing with a rainbow of raincoats, scarves and other outerwear. All the mess belonged to me and Edna. Mark’s coats were neatly hung up in the hall closet on hangers, even his cardigans were there.
Having Mark move in with us permanently was a good move, it really was, especially at meal times on cold wet nights like this. But the price of eating so well was having to put up with his little quirks. He insisted on tidiness and order, it was worse than being in the army, and sometimes I missed the comfortable dishevelment that me and my aunt had lived in for the past ten years.
‘You wallowed in that mess,’ Mark had pointed out when I said that to him once. ‘Like pigs in a sty.’ And give him his due, he gritted his teeth and let us have our untidy corners like the end counter. It was a compromise eased by his skills in the kitchen.
Over the radio news, I heard the sound of heavy boxes being shoved around in the hallway. I jerked my head towards the source. ‘What’s she at now?’
‘Christmas,’ he said. ‘Early decorating. Good thing you warned me about that, otherwise she would have found the troll.’
He raised his voice so Edna would hear. ‘Leave that, I’ll move all the boxes, Ed. Supper’s almost ready.’
Mark opened the oven door and withdrew the garlic bread with the cheese perfectly browned and bubbly and crisply, just the way he knew I loved it. While he drained the pasta, I wandered over and tasted the sauce from the spoon.
‘Oh my God,’ I said, after it had filled my mouth with its spice and tomatoey goodness. ‘Edna! Come eat! I’m not waiting for you.’
She appeared in the doorway, her eyes alight and a smudge of attic dust on her cheek. ‘This is going to be the best Christmas ever,’ she said. ‘You’ll never guess what I found, Dara! The old stockings, the ones we haven’t seen for years.’
‘Not... the velvet patchwork ones?’
‘Yes! They were tucked away in a box with your old baby clothes,’ she said. ‘God knows how they got there.’ She shrugged and moved to the cutlery drawer, counting out spoons and forks and a knife for me because I preferred to cut my long spaghetti strands into manageable pieces.
These Christmas stockings were very special. They held more than the memory of candies, chocolate oranges and joke presents over the years – they held the essence of Mom and our lives before she disappeared, and I’d thought them lost forever. She had made the four stockings from scraps of velvet taken from old clothes and drapes, silks and satins and embroidery thread, hand-pieced together with love.
‘I have to see them!’
‘In the box right there around the corner,’ Edna said as she took her seat. ‘Don’t get tomato sauce on them.’
The spaghetti was totally forgotten by now as I brought the carton back into the kitchen with me. Four brightly hued stockings lay inside, each with a name picked out in gold thread along the top. Dara. Edna. Marian.
And Jon. The one stocking that was still pristine, never having hung by the old fireplace in the parlour, the loved one who had never joined our Christmas Day celebrations. I left that one behind in the box.
‘Oh my God, they’re just like I remembered them,’ I whispered, laying them reverently on the only available clean counter space. I stroked Mom’s with especial love and care, and my fingers tingled as if with magic. It might have been the velvet and silk. The stockings were full of Christmases past, the warmth of those celebrations like echoes in the cloth. ‘Thanks, Edna.’
‘Come eat now,’ Mark said softly and he laid my plate down in my setting.
I didn’t take my eyes off them all during supper, the rainbow glows filling my eyes so I could see little else.
It would be a good Christmas, Edna was right.
I LOADED UP the new dishwasher, the one Edna had predicted would show up soon enough. It hadn’t taken Mark long to get one installed, he even did the plumbing himself. Edna and I cleaned up after the meal, except for the stove top which Mark looked after because somehow we always forgot about that bit. And when we’d all finished, the kitchen sparkled, most of it. It wasn’t what we were used to, but I realized I liked it - tidiness and order were becoming our new norm.
I poured the hot water into the teapot and the radio news took up the space in the lull of conversation as we waited for the tea to steep. The announcer spoke of a rash of home invasions in the city, not much taken except money and Christmas presents.
‘How absolutely mean is that?’ Edna said as she brought out a multi-pack of assorted squares, the little cake bars made by every traditional bakery and sweet shop. She laid them on the table and opened the plastic top. I quickly grabbed a Nanaimo bar, my favourite.
‘Yeah, what grinches – imagine stealing gifts from under the trees,’ I agreed, then bit into the chocolate and cream. Edna took a date square and a carrot cake, one for each hand.
‘There’s a lot of badness out there,’ Mark said as he belatedly handed out three small side plates to catch our crumbs. ‘This time of the year, some people get to feeling like they don’t have enough compared to others, and they take it upon themselves to redistribute the wealth. You’ve got the organized thieves like this, and then there’s the ones who grab the Salvation Army buckets and run. Sometimes it seems like everyone’s out to steal from everyone else.’
My mind wandered back to Willem and his coven of women. They were giving him their money, pressing it on him even, but he was still a trickster who played on deception and their deep desires. No better than the lowlifes Mark dealt with every day in his job as a cop.
What did that make me? I brushed the thought aside. I was only going along with Willem in order to get back what was mine, not really playing a part in his con game. I wasn’t gaining money from his work.
My guilty thoughts were interrupted by a cold draft behind me as the inner back door creaked open. We all looked up.
Hugh. He stood framed in the light from the kitchen, his black leather jacket glistening with damp and a long Dr. Who style scarf about his neck. His dark hair was tousled from the wind and from never being brushed, and he had a strange expression on his face.
‘Sorry for barging on in,’ he said as he hesitated at the doorway. ‘I did ring the bell.’
‘The doorbell doesn’t work when it’s wet out,’ Edna said with a smile. ‘Been like that for years. Come on in and have a cup of tea.’
Our eyes met briefly. He gave a quick smile. I could have sworn there was a note of apology there on his handsome face, but maybe it was a trick of the light.
‘Doesn’t work when it’s raining?’ Mark said, looking appalled. ‘Edna, did it never strike you that might be dangerous? It means there’s water getting into the electrical system.’
‘Yeah, you might want to check into that, Mark,’ I said with a grin, light-hearted again because I hated when Hugh and I quarrelled. I moved my chair so he could pull up a spare to the table. He took off his jacket and slung it over the back. Mark didn’t say a thing, just roll
ed his eyes at us all.
‘So we’re starting the decorating tonight,’ Edna said.
Hugh’s eyebrows rose a notch. ‘This early? It’s hardly...’
‘Edna likes Christmas,’ I interrupted him. ‘It’s important.’
‘First of all, I want to hang those stockings,’ she said. ‘Just like we used to do over the fireplace. Mark – we’re going to need another one for you.’
‘Not in the parlour?’ Mark had a look of alarm on his face. ‘I need to plaster in there. It’s not fit for habitation yet.’
‘Is that really necessary?’ Edna screwed up her mouth and she set the stockings back down on the counter. ‘Why not just throw a bit of paint on the walls if you feel so strongly about fixing up the room?’
‘Because that’s not how it’s done,’ Mark said, standing up. ‘It doesn’t make sense to do half a job. I have to fill in the holes and cracks in the walls before I paint, otherwise...’ He followed her out to the hallway, the two of them complaining about the other in a companionable way.
Hugh and I smiled at each other.
‘They’re lovely,’ he said, nodding his head at the patchwork creations.
‘My Mom made them,’ I said, reaching over to take them in my hands. ‘They’ve just resurfaced after years of being lost.’
‘Your mother...’ he said softly. Hugh was aware I was Jon de Teilhard’s bastard daughter, knew about my half blood. Being a cohort of my Dad’s, he stayed with Jon and Cate when he was in town in their huge mansion on New Cove Road, so he probably also knew how Cate felt about me and my Mom too, I guess. And about how Mom just disappeared so suddenly one day.
There was a look of sympathy in his eyes which I couldn’t bear, not right then, not with Edna and Mark happily squabbling in the next room and my belly full in the warmth of the kitchen. Not with the sudden appearance of the beloved stockings from a time when we were all happy.
‘She’s not dead, you know,’ I blurted out, unshed tears making my voice rough. ‘Everyone acts as though she is, but she can’t be.’
He said nothing.
‘She just went away,’ I continued. ‘She’ll come back.’
‘Do you remember then, around the time she left?’
I was quiet for a moment. ‘Yeah, I do, a bit. It was before Christmas, around this time of year. Mom and Jon had been arguing a lot, every time he came over.’
Hugh was totally silent.
‘There was no snow that year,’ I said. ‘Everything was still green. I was up in my room one evening, trying to get away from the yelling. Edna wasn’t home.’
I pictured it again in my head, huddled under my old quilts while my parents fought. The house had been cold, of course, despite the lack of snow. Sometimes the old radiators couldn’t quite bring the hot water all the way upstairs. My parents had been below me in the parlour with the French doors that led out to the walled private garden. We still regularly used that part of the house back then.
His raised voice had rung through the floorboards, despite the solidity of the house’s construction.
‘You cannot mess with this stuff,’ he roared. ‘You know nothing of it. You’ll put yourself in danger!’
There had been more back and forth between them, then the sound of his boots stomping out the front door. That may have been the last time he’d seen her and the last time that front door had been used. I’d had no idea of the events that would pass, and even if I had foreknowledge, how could I at ten years old have stopped them?
And that had been the last time those stockings hung by the fireplace. Edna and I hadn’t celebrated Christmas that year as we waited for Mom to return.
I gathered myself together and turned away so he wouldn’t see me wipe the tear from my cheek. ‘Sorry,’ I said to him. ‘Got lost there for a moment.’
He shook his head as if to say no worries.
‘So, you came back here?’ I reminded him.
He gave a start. ‘Yes,’ he replied slowly, leaning back in his wooden chair with his long legs stretched before him. ‘I had to come back. I felt ... I felt we parted on the wrong note this afternoon, and for that, I want to apologize.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Well, thanks, I guess.’
Hugh stood up and took my hand. ‘Let’s go for a drive,’ he said. ‘I’m not finished yet, and it’s hard to think here.’
The bickering between my aunt and her boyfriend had quickly turned to loud laughter and they’d started up the old record player, the one from the sixties. It was attached to an ancient cabinet that held a black and white TV that would still work except that technology had left it behind long ago and there were no longer any signals for it to pick up from the stratosphere. But the turntable gave off its true sound still, and the Beatles had joined Edna and Mark.
‘Oh God, yes,’ I said, letting his warm hand haul me up. ‘They’re going to break out the Glenfiddich soon and start dancing. Let’s get out of here.’
WE DIDN’T GO to a coffee shop or a bar. Instead, Hugh drove through the wet downtown streets and headed up to the top of Signal Hill, to the stone tower that overlooked and defined the city. He had taught me to fly there last September, or at least how to project my mind through space so I was like a bird flying overhead, able to look down upon the streets.
There was not much to see from this vantage point today and ours was the only car in the lot. He parked so that we faced the city, our backs to the big invisible ocean going on for thousands of kilometers with nothing but water between us and Ireland. The fog pressed in on the city from every direction as if this was all there was to the world, no east end or west end, even the university was shrouded so that all we could see was just this small island of humanity far below us, the vehicles bustling down the puddled roads, the streetlights weakly glimmering.
Hugh still said nothing, just stared straight ahead in that pensive manner of his. The wind was wickedly forceful up here, rocking the car and whistling through the vents. I waited for him to speak. He never did anything without a reason, and I was pretty sure he hadn’t driven up here just to look at the fog.
But the tension got to me at last, and I couldn’t hold back.
‘So what?’ I asked him. ‘What is it? You want to say something, just say it.’ I sat back in my seat and folded my arms.
‘I’m going to Paris tomorrow, as I told you,’ he said. ‘But I feel it’s important to give you some advice before I leave.’
I huddled into my jacket and brought Mom’s blue scarf closer around my neck, for he’d turned off the engine and the car was quickly growing cold.
‘First of all, I want to remind you that I require complete honesty from you, if we’re to embark on your education,’ he said slowly. ‘It won’t be an easy thing.’
‘No problem,’ I said, crossing only two fingers. ‘I promise you, when we’re over there, I won’t... lie to you about anything, if that’s what you mean.’ I didn’t really see what he was getting at.
‘And also,’ he continued as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘The first thing you need to know about witch craft, true power, is that a witch should have no ego when practicing magic.’ He stopped and turned his head to look directly into my eyes.
‘Ego,’ I said. ‘Lose the ego. Got it.’
He let out a deep sigh. ‘I don’t think you do get it, not really. This is why I left you the Psychology text book, so that you can read it and garner an understanding of things we’ll be exploring up in Scotland. In fact, I gave you all those books for a very good reason. You need to have at least read them before you go, even if you don’t understand them.’
‘It’s a pretty thick book,’ I objected. ‘They’re all really big, without hardly any illustrations or anything, Hugh. I just want to learn how to do magic, I don’t need all that other stuff.’
He shook his head. ‘I do have serious doubts as to the viability of this plan.’
‘It was your idea to begin with,’ I retorted. ‘Dad just wanted me to leave the city
and get out of his hair. It was you who suggested Scotland, for me to learn how to develop my power.’
‘Yes, your power.’
‘And you said yourself, I have strong magic,’ I continued in a rush, seeing my dreams about to go down the drain. He couldn’t take this away from me, not now that I knew the magic school was out there and available for a half-witch like myself, that I could be trained to use the power I’d always known I had, even if I’d been taught to shove it away deep inside of me for many years. He couldn’t do this to me.
‘I may be behind all the kids there, but I’ll more than make up for the lost time. Remember how quickly I’ve picked up on everything you’ve taught?’
He nodded. ‘I don’t disagree with you, but that is precisely what bothers me,’ he said slowly.
‘I’m good, I’m powerful! I want to work with you, Hugh, please don’t do this to me.’
‘Yes, it is best for you to be trained,’ he said. ‘The alternative would be... awful, I’m afraid. Now that your power has reawakened.’ He wasn’t looking at me while he spoke now. Instead, he gazed at the blurry city lights below.
A cold chill went up my spine. ‘What alternative? Hugh, what the frig are you talking about?’
‘One of the elders... has concerns,’ he said.
‘Elders? In Scotland, you mean?’ I asked. ‘What concerns? They don’t even know me.’
He nodded slowly, then turned his head toward me.
‘They know enough. They all agree that you need the training, that really, it has to be done,’ he said. ‘However, there is some question as to your attitude. It is felt, by this particular elder, that you are too arrogant, that you have not developed the necessary respect for your craft.’
It was my turn to be silent. Was I being judged before they had even met me?
‘News of the fairy incident has reached the wrong ears,’ he said, then gave an uncharacteristic shrug. ‘And the dwarves.’
‘Enough, Hugh!’ I found myself shouting. ‘Stop throwing out all these hints, and just give it to me straight. I’ve screwed up, yes, but that’s why I’m going away - to learn how to do magic properly, with all the basic foundational work and everything, so I won’t make the sort of stupid mistakes which, I might add, only came about because I hadn’t been taught properly.’