September Again (September Stories)

by Jones, Hunter S.

  7.

  Uncertain Terms

  Skyler and Jazz gaze at Nook Manor. It’s a long way from London, long way from anywhere, thinks Sky. Can this really be it? Are they really there? Neither can quite believe it. Jazz checks out the name on the brass plate on a brick post with a built-in intercom. Very efficient. Yep, they are definitely at their destination. Without either of them lifting a finger, the ancient wrought iron gates – a latticework of scrolls and circles – begins to glide noiselessly open.

  “Think we’re expected?” says Jazz.

  “After you,” says Sky.

  “No. After you. I insist.”

  “Smile, dykie-love-bitch, you’re on CCTVee-hee. Big brother surveillance is here today and here to stay.”

  The gates close behind them as soon as they’ve crossed the threshold. As yet, they cannot see the house, just a long avenue of ancient oaks, some now little more than broken hulks as wide as they are tall.

  “So this is where retired mafia hit men come to die,” says Sky, nodding at an especially squat tree hulk.

  “The things you say. No wonder you only got low grades in school.”

  “Shuddit.”

  “Or else? Will you fuck me like a diesel weasel?”

  “I might just.”

  “Promises. I wonder what Indie would have made of this place.”

  “Yeah, shame none of us will ever know.”

  “He owed it all to her, you know. Jack Savage.”

  “Yeah, didn’t he just.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Quite excited, actually. I can’t believe we are actually doing this.”

  “Me either.”

  “Neither.”

  “What?”

  “Me neither.”

  “Are you editing my conversation again?”

  “Someone has to.”

  “Yeah, right. Long way from London.”

  “Don’t keep saying that!”

  “Sorry.”

  “Focus. We’re here for Indie.”

  “And Zelda.”

  “Exactly. We will take no shit from her old slapper mother, whatever she is – Miss Havisham newbie retro sub-type.”

  “We’ll get nowhere if you talk to her like that.”

  “Do you really think she’ll tell us anything we don’t know?”

  “Why we’re here.”

  “Yeah.”

  Nook Manor reveals itself between the trees.

  “Wowza, spookeee or what?”

  “So that’s what ‘an eight-bayed Jacobean confection’ is all about. It looks like old cake icing.”

  “What?”

  “It’s what it said online. I looked it up on my phone on the train. The core of the house is much older. It’s all front.”

  “Just like you.”

  “Shuddit.”

  “Oh, bugger, look what’s coming!”

  “Jesus, what kind of dog is that?”

  “Looks like a firkin’ lion to me.”

  “What the ...”

  “Shall we run?”

  “No way. It’ll think we’re scared.”

  “We are scared.”

  They start to run towards the trees.

  “Shit, it’s ... Hound … of … the … Baskervilles country down here.”

  “I knew we shouldn’t have come.”

  WUUFFFF! GRRRR-WUUF-WUUF!

  “OH MY GAWD!”

  Harry, Malachy’s super-sized wolfhound, bounds up to Skyler like the amber-eyed incubus from hell and places his giant paws on her round shoulders – the better to lick her face with his foot-long pink tongue. Sky, for her part, falls for him, literally, tumbling onto something soft and sticky.

  RRRRR-RRRR-RRR! whines Harry, his hairy tail flailing wildly.

  “It’s all right; he won’t bite!” yells Malachy, speeding up on a battered old quad-bike. “Sorry about that. Are you all right? Down, boy!”

  Jazz is bent double, wheezing with laughter. Sky jumps up and pushes her. Jazz, helpless, falls over in the grass.

  “Sorry, we don’t get many visitors down here. He gets a bit carried away with himself. I’m Malachy.”

  The girls look at each other in awe.

  “Did you ever meet Indie?” says Jazz, back on message.

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  “Erm, do you mind?”

  “Sorry about that,” says Skyler, holding out her hand. “She can’t help it. She’s worse than me.” She flashes Jazz one of those looks.

  “I’ll take you to the house,” says Malachy. “Liz, Mrs. Savage, is expecting you.”

  Even Harry seems to fall into line at the mention of Mrs. Savage as the group walks slowly to the house in silence. Serious business is on hand, it seems. Sky and Jazz are, for once, quelled by the moment of the moment.

  “The inner sanctum of poetry, kiddo,” whispers Sky to Jazz, who nods a tiny, tic-like nod.

  Liz is waiting for them in the hall, one hand resting on a circular Cuban mahogany table, circa 1780. She’s having one of her good days. The voices she’s been hearing since the skunk have been sulking for a week now, although she knows they’ll be back – but not today. She’s all in black, looking beautiful, actually. Yes, she’s made an effort – wearing the jet necklace and earrings Jack bought her on a trip to Whitby. Her book group had been reading A.S. Byatt’s Possession and so he’d taken her there on a whim.

  “Hi,” she says, smiling as only a Strong American Woman can smile, even when she’s been turned to Alamogordo glass on the desert floor of her life. “Welcome to Nook Manor, home of the late, great metaphysical poet, Jack Savage, the man I had the privilege to make my husband.”

  Sky jabs Jazz in the ribs with an elbow.

  “Hello, Mrs. Savage,” says Jazz. “Pleasure to meet you. Thank you for inviting us.”

  Liz takes a couple of steps towards them, hesitates, and looks over her shoulder.

  “I’ll answer any questions you may have, but no pictures, please. Thank you. Would you like to join me in the library? It’s where Jack used to write. Nothing’s changed since his death. His desk is as he left it. Have a seat. You girls must be thirsty. What would you like?”

  Jazz eyes a well-stocked cocktail cabinet.

  “JD on the rocks, please.”

  “I’ll join you,” says Skyler.

  “From Tennessee, and it’s just across the state line from my home state of Georgia,” says Liz, pouring the hooch. “It’s where my daughter is right now – Zelda.”

  “Cheers, Mrs. Savage.”

  “Call me Liz. Which one of you is Jazz?”

  “Oh, that’s me, sorry. This is my, erm, friend, Skyler.”

  “I need your help,” says Liz. “You know why.”

  “Still not talking to you, right?”

  “Right. My daughter, Zelda, is a lot like Indie is some ways: headstrong, intelligent, gifted, but lost. Lost to me, maybe forever.”

  “You’ve nothing to worry about, Mrs. Savage.”

  “Liz.”

  “Sorry, Liz. You’ve nothing to worry about. Zelda is A-OK in the States. She’s become the acknowledged world expert on Indie Shadwick and is breaking news about her every week. Her blogs are off the scale for brilliance. We love them, don’t we, Sky? Her Twitter followership is over a hundred thousand now. She’s gone viral. I’m really sorry about what happened to you on the anniversary of Indie’s death.”

  “Are you in direct contact with my daughter?”

  “Might be.”

  “You implied in your messages to me that you are.”

  “What of it?”

  “She won’t speak to me.”

  “We’ve heard.”

  “I need to speak to her.”

  “But she doesn’t need to speak to you, right?”

  “Jack had such a way with words and women. Let me show you something. Lovely leather, isn’t it? From Florence. It was a gift from some gay German prince who fancied Jack. Everyone lov
ed him, everyone. And he loved them all back. It was how he was. I know he didn’t love me as much as he loved Indie. But he did love me. He loved me in a different way. He was a changed man after her death. Something died inside him when she walked into that train. Poor, poor, girl. It was how she was. Bi-polar. Tragically talented. I was always second best to her. I did my best for him, though. I tried to make life better for him.”

  Liz hands Jazz a fine leather photo album.

  “Go ahead,” she says in response to Skyler’s questioning eyes. “Be my guest.”

  Jazz opens the book and gasps. “It’s her, pictures of Indie. I’ve never seen these before.”

  “No one has,” says Liz. “Jack took them himself. It’s his personal collection.”

  “There’s hundreds of them. Look, Sky! Just look. She’s so young.”

  “God, she’s beautiful. Look at her eyes. Oh my! Look: Paris!”

  A tear rolls downs Liz’s face.

  “Look! Oh, Jazz! Look at this one! Look at the look she’s giving him. Oh my God, I’m all goose-goggy. The hairs on my neck are doing a conga.”

  Jazz touches Sky’s arm and points with her eyes at Liz, who is sobbing silently.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Savage?”

  “Is all this too much for you?”

  “My daughter won’t talk to me and it’s breaking my heart.”

  Jazz looks to Sky for help, but finds only the same confusion that she is feeling.

  “What can we do for you, Mrs. Savage?”

  Liz looks from one face to another. A tear runs from Skyler’s eye.

  “I just want to talk to her. Please.” Liz pours herself a JD and drinks. “Zelda believes that Indie should have been her mother, not me. She hates me because I am not Indie.”

  Her guests are agape.

  “I can’t take it much longer.”

  Sky gets up and goes to Liz, kneels before her, and puts an arm around her shoulder. Their foreheads meet. Liz’s face is a mask of torment. The photo album slips through Sky’s knees and hits the oak floor. Liz sniffs, kisses Sky’s head, strokes her hair, and draws herself up.

  “Thank you for coming. I go from day to day. Looking forward to your visit has kept me going all this week. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. I just want to make my peace with Zelda. I don’t want to get back into her life if she doesn’t want me there. But I don’t want there to be hatred between us. I know from my friend Marlowe in Atlanta that Zelda is doing just fine in the States. She will be all right there. She’s going to Vanderbilt University. She wants for nothing. Jack made sure of that. He looked after us all. Indie was the only one he couldn’t look out for. Now I’m alone. I don’t have him to keep me going. And Zelda hates me because I’m not Indie. Malachy found those photos of Indie in one of Jack’s boxes a few weeks ago. Neither of us had seen them; no one has. I want my daughter to have them. She loves Indie, God knows she loves her. I want Zelda to have these pictures and some poems Malachy has found.”

  “To Indie?”

  “Yes.”

  “My God, unpublished poems to Indie!”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry, Mrs. Savage. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “I know you didn’t. It’s all right. If you are in touch with my daughter, would you give her this message from me, please? Tell her about the album. Tell her it is hers, that I will send it to her by registered mail. Unconditionally. Tell her I just want to be at peace with her. And that I love her. Unconditionally.”

  “We are in touch with her.”

  “Will you tell her everything I’ve said?”

  “Everything.”

  “That’s all I can ask of you.” Liz reaches out and takes their hands. “You’re good, good girls. Thank you for coming to see me like this. It means everything to me. There’s something else I’ve never said to anyone. I, too, wish Jack had married Indie. She was everything to him. I wish she’d lived to marry him. I wish that my Zelda was her daughter. I will say all of this if that’s what it takes to make my daughter happy. Because that is what she believes was meant to be. I’m just the woman from across an ocean who showed up in the aftermath of a tragedy, truth be known.” Liz nervously fidgets with her engagement ring.

  “Don’t beat yourself up, Mrs. Savage. You loved Jack and you did your best. That’s all any of us can do, isn’t that right, Sky?”

  “Yes, yes, and yes, again.”

  “You’re good girls, good, good girls. I can see you love each other.”

  “Yes, we do, very much so.”

  “Good.” Liz nods at first one and then the other. “I’ve got to go now. Please excuse me. Malachy will look after you. He’s making you something to eat right now.”

  And with that, she gets up, her left knee clicking loudly. She limps from the room without a backwards glance.

  Jazz looks at Sky and Sky looks at Jazz. Both look at the priceless album on the ground between them.

  “No, Jazz, do not even think that thought.”

  “What?! What?!”

  “Don’t even go there.”

  “It must be worth a fortune. All this stuff.” She looks around the dead poet’s library.

  “We play it exactly the way she wants us to. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “What an experience.”

  “Not many Benny.”

  A scuffing of claws on old oak boards heralds the sedate arrival of Harry the wolfhound.

  “Hey up, Sky, your lover boy’s back again.”

  “Wash your mouth out.”

  Harry saunters between the two friends, whines for some it’s-a-dog’s-life reason, and stretches out on the floor.

  “Nice,” says Sky, raising an eyebrow as Jazz starts giggling. “What?”

  “Sight of you falling for lover boy here. Looks like you’ve tired him out.”

  Harry lifts an ear, rests muzzle on paws, licks said paws.

  “Eww! To think, he was licking your face ten minutes ago. I wonder where else that tongue’s been?”

  “Wash your mouth out.”

  “Excuse me, ladies, would you care for a spot of Cornish stew?” asks Malachy from the library doorway. Harry raises both ears.

  “Er, we’re vegetarians,” says Jazz. “Thanks for the offer, though.”

  “I have some homemade sheep’s cheese. And some today baked bread.”

  “What, from those funny black and white sheep with the weird horns we saw from the drive?” asks Sky.

  “The very same,” says Malachy. “They’re Jacobs. Jack loved them.”

  “Did you know him long?” asks Jazz.

  “Half my life,” says Malachy.

  “Do you live in the house?” asks Sky.

  “No, I have a cottage.”

  “So you know Zelda Savage too?” asks Jazz.

  “I was there the day she was born.”

  Harry whines.

  “None of this feels real,” says Sky. “I still can’t believe we’re here. Is this really where Jack O. Savage used to do his writing?”

  “Yes, some of it,” says Malachy. “He’d done all his best work before he bought this place, but yes, he did write poems in here sometimes. Mostly he wrote in the barn, surrounded by his sheep. He had a sort of den down there. The barn’s the oldest part of Nook Manor, fourteenth century.”

  “Can we see it?”

  “Yes, why not? Has, erm…” Malachy nods towards the door through which Liz left the library. “Has Mrs. Savage finished talking to you?”

  “We think so. She wants us to contact Zelda for her.”

  “And will you?”

  “Yes, we’ve said we will and we will. We’ll do exactly what she wants.”

  “Excellent, she really needs your help. Would you care to join me in the kitchen? Then I’ll show you round the place. I can show you some of his actual writing if you like. I’m cataloguing a box of his papers right now.”

  Jazz almost trips over Harry as they follow Malachy down
an oak-paneled corridor, ever deeper into the inner sanctum of a poet’s dream.

  Part III

  Tennessee River

  8.

  A Contrite Heart

  The silent raven crosses overhead, black against the blue sky of the Tennessee Valley. Liz can’t hear any other birds or outdoor sounds. The stillness of the scene feels ominous. A waft of lavender fills the air. Her mother’s favorite herb is lavender. She always kept it in the garden on the farm in Georgia. Someone is watching. She turns to see the Cherokee warrior. He is finally here. She is so tired. Most days, she can barely move. It will be a relief to shake these mortal chains and be with the ones who love her. Especially Jack, the poet, her dream come true. Finally, she will be with him forever. The warrior looks at her. He shakes his head. No.

  No. No. No. She attempts to call to him, to implore that she must go this time. He shakes her, someone wakes her. She opens her eyes to see Mrs. T and Malachy.

  Mrs. T is lightly moving her shoulders in the beginning light of a new day as it creeps through the velvet drapes in the bedroom. “Liz, Liz, please wake up. We’ve had a call from America,” she whispers.

  “America? Is my baby okay? Is Zelda all right?” Suddenly, Liz is in full panic mode. “Where’s the phone? I’ve got to talk to her!”

  “Liz, Liz, your Zelda is okay.” Malachy pulls up a chair and sits it alongside the large bed. He reaches for her left hand. He pats it softly before speaking again. “Liz, your father called us. Not long ago, just a few hours ago, your mother passed away.”

  Mrs. T takes her other hand. “Liz, she died peacefully in her sleep. Your father got up during the night because he heard a noise outside. When he returned to the bedroom, he noticed that your mother wasn’t breathing. She didn’t suffer, Liz. She didn’t suffer for a minute.”