Between

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Romano raised an eyebrow. “They won’t mind you exploring outside,” he said. “I won’t be long if you want to wait here.”

  The old people were as sun-browned and bent as their olive trees. They reached up to kiss Romano, clucking like their hens. Romano reduced himself to their level, bending, kissing back wizened cheeks. Everyone wore black, living silhouettes in a golden landscape. Sophie wandered off to sit on an old wooden bench under an arch of vine. Shaded by leaf and the first clusters of pip hard fruit, she watched Romano enter the cottage and then turned her attention to the others. Wayne and Julian stood together beside the car in the harsh sunlight, one dark head, the other nodding blonde curls. Wayne was the taller, broad shouldered now without his burden. His jeans were torn at both knees. Sophie watched the protruding knee joints and their polished strength. She smiled.

  Wayne, unaware of scrutiny, waved towards the verges of wild flowers and the winding lane beyond the fence. “Everything’s just so picturesque. Just like a fairy story.”

  Julian nodded, appreciative. “Yes. Magic.”

  But it was Wayne Sophie was watching. Her mother had discovered that sort of magic out here and she was beginning to wonder if she might too.

  Then Romano’s shadow blotted the sun dazzle and his soft, deep voice interrupted her drifting thoughts. “Wake up. Guiseppe and Natalia want to give you something before we go.”

  The old couple gave her an earthenware pot of honey, pressed it into her hands with eager nods and huge smiles, bobbing, encouraging. Sophie had learned thank you in Italian and said it. “Grazie, grazie tante.”

  “They knew Georgia,” said Romano. “They say you look like her. You do.”

  Sophie nursed the pot of honey as they drove home. It was warm and heavy. Julian and Wayne sat together in the back. Sophie felt Wayne’s breath on the curve of her neck as she watched Romano’s hands on the driving wheel beside her, then turned to watch the passing roadside and its tangle of yellow flowers, let the wind tousle her hair, then closed her eyes against glare and speed. It was an old open top, a wide white sports car, as dusty as the lanes they drove. Too old to be smart, too young to be vintage, but unpretentiously sumptuous and wondrously fun.

  “Your car reminds me of you,” said Sophie sleepily.

  Romano smiled. “Decrepit? Battered? Rather noisy?”

  “Full of character,” said Sophie.

  There were houses, clustered or singular, and now they flew low enough to see the roof tops and the sudden gleam of sunshine caught in glass. Georgia twisted, rolling through the sky as it parted for her, currents like horses tossing their manes. She flung back her own hair, felt the sparkle of the light-energy tingle across her skin, and settled, reattaching herself to Norwen’s hand. The pleasure of his touch was a caress of energy.

  “I didn’t expect such cosy little houses.”

  “Your expectations,” said Norwen, “are always likely to be mistaken, until you are more experienced in the concept of death. Remember that home is a subconscious need, and symbolic of our inner spirit searching for its place. All humanity will make an exterior home for itself until it finds total peace within the soul, for of course, soul is its own home.”

  “You said how you still have a sort of home on the ninth,” she nodded.

  “Yes. I am recent to the ninth, and so still build a shelter of familiarity. It is on the tenth plane that spirit arrives in a purity of state sufficient to eliminate the need for all vestiges of physical symbols. From that point, we begin to truly discover our own divinity.”

  “Oh, I feel far too ordinary to think of myself as divine,” she laughed. “After all, you keep telling me I’m wrong about everything, so that’s not very divine, is it? So, if our houses represent ourselves, what does mine say of me?”

  “That you have only recently been born here, and need the safety of the familiar above all things,” he said. “Your home will change and grow, as you do.”

  Georgia giggled, a little self-conscious. “Then I want a palace,” she said. “Like Versailles, perhaps.”

  “Growth is not measured by size,” he answered. “Now, this is not the time for introspection, but for outer discovery. Watch where I am taking you. The fifth plane is two planes distant from your own, with a changeful and meandering message. It is the first base up from the deep dark. Here, the arriving souls are not locked into the painful obsessions and distortions of lower life. They are eager to learn, but not yet ready for the lesson.”

  “What gorgeous autumn colours.” Georgia brushed the tree tops with her fingers, becoming breeze. “So here there are seasons. Does it rain?”

  “The occasional seasons of the fifth are part of its familiarity and its symbolic challenge,” Norwen told her. “But if you wish it, you can create rain on your own plane, as you once created dawn.”

  “And that?”

  “That is the House of Rest, entrance to the fifth,” he said. “Each plane has a door to the Temple of arrival, a place where those who need it are revived by sleep and dream. Some die directly into the welcome of a bed under rainbow curtains. Others arrive elsewhere and are then brought to the Temple, as you were. Some have different beginnings. It is all relative.”

  “Even into the higher levels? The eighth? Or ninth?”

  “None can die directly into the ninth; its vibrations separate it too greatly from Earth. The few who die into the eighth are rare indeed, and souls of immense spiritual progress. They need no hospital, no rest or recuperation in dream. But even the greatest amongst us usually arrive on the seventh, with a brief need to disentangle from life’s influences and expectations. Now, very soon we go down to land. Are you ready for what you may find?”

  She had found a copse of trees all a dither in pink beneath her feet, a delicious froth and fluff of shyest pastels, crowned in candy. Not pink blossom but pink in themselves. Their trunks as straight as sunbeams, were all washed in rose, bark peeling in a blazon of undressed blush.

  “Just flying is such a joy.” Georgia breathed deep. She had no words left for description. The endless beauty sent her spinning, speechless and inspired.

  “But we are here for a purpose,” Norwen reminded her. “Are you nervous of the end result?”

  Of course, since he could read her mind. “Actually – a bit scared. I’ll fail first time around and I expect that. But it’ll hurt. And since arriving here, nothing else has hurt at all. I’m out of practise.” She turned aside, banishing fear, asking, “Why are the trees different? Why are they pink?”

  “Independence of spirit. They wanted to be pink. All life has spirit of a sort, which here infers choice. And now -”

  There was so much she still wanted to say. That Norwen had left no passing reflection in the water they had flown over, though she had been charmed to see her own passing image, fleeting ripples of colour wearing her own face. Instead Norwen, although he was present, was made of vibrations uncatchable within the essence of the fifth. That she was cold now, and the cloud cover had begun to loom. That a dullness of both body and mind encompassed and reached for her as they neared the land.

  “We are here,” said Norwen, and her toes touched solid ground.

  For the first time since death, Georgia struggled for breath and had to remember her lungs. “She lives here then?”

  “Nearby. You are cold now because you feel the predomination of pessimism and hopelessness. Those who live here are acclimatised and feel little discomfort. Warm yourself from within by keeping your attitude positive.”

  Georgia looked around her. It was a gloomy square, paved, the centre of a township, and busy. Flowers grew between the flagstones, but were stunted. The sky seemed a long way away. People scurried, darting into doorways. Within the grey, Norwen blazed like a huge and holy light. “Now that’s disconcerting,” whispered Georgia. “You’re like a – torch.”

  Immediately she felt herself shrinking. Overshadowed, her faults and her insignificance felt silhouetted in stark evidence.
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  “Indeed,” said Norwen, and had released her hand, so that the cold blew sharper around and through her. “Most people here will become afraid and avoid me. Or they will seek me, wanting easy salvation. So I will leave you here, and allow your exploration to be your own independent achievement. When you wish to go, let the wish absorb you, and you will find yourself immediately back in your own home.”

  “I am driving the lanes of Tuscany,” Sophie thought. “Me. Little unromantic me, with the cypresses and the sunshine and the wind in my eyes. In Italy, on the wrong side of the road, and beside me is one of the most handsome men in the world who used to be my mother’s lover, and behind is a bronzed roly-poly angel, who I fancy like crazy. Oh, and Julian too of course, who doesn’t count.”

  Romano’s brother was broader and shorter with a deep jigsaw of sun-etched character lines and an ingrained grin. He spoke hesitant English, his wife none, but he showed the three guests over the DelMare vineyards, the stables and antique olive presses still operating for personal use, the great cool cellars of fermenting barrels, the gleaming vats and bubbling steel paraphernalia of wine-making.

  Out in the burnished rows of vine, the last week of fumigating and fertilizing was finishing its spring-cleaning flurry, and the preparations for wire-raising begun. Luca kissed his brother and Sophie on both cheeks, shook Wayne’s and Julian’s hands. “Your mother,” said Luca carefully, “we knew her well. So good, so beautiful. She make my Romano so happy. We are so sorry to hear of the passing. We feel for him, and for you.”

  Sophie nodded. There wasn’t much to say, and anyway, he wouldn’t understand. “Thank you.”

  “He could have kissed me too,” breathed Julian afterwards. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

  “Stop pretending to be stereotypical,” said Sophie. “You don’t really want to be kissed by an old man with bristles and big teeth.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Julian.

  She wanted to be kissed by Wayne, who was golden and muscled and blue-eyed.

  A plump, middle aged woman with a round, pretty face bustled past. The collar of her red coat was turned up against the low cloud. The scarlet wool was defiant on the shadowed pavement. The woman’s lipstick matched. Her aura was a colourless puff of cloud, turned up, like her collar, and around her chin like a scarf of indignant foggy swathes. She pushed past, then suddenly, before crossing the street, dug out with a purposeful elbow. To herself the woman smiled, the jagged thrust, hidden in casual innocence, revealing spite and envy. Georgia looked down in surprise. The woman’s disillusion was less disguised than her satisfaction had been, for now she saw her elbow pass right through Georgia’s body and make no contact. She scowled and hurried on.

  Norwen’s voice said into Georgia’s head, “You have met your mother. Now, if you wish it, you should follow her.”

  “Her?”

  She said it aloud, and the woman in red turned, furious.

  “You talking about me? I never did a thing. Mind your own damn business.”

  Georgia cringed, straightened again, planted her feet wide and reminded herself to keep her answers telepathic. To Norwen she thought, “But I have no sense of knowing her. I expected when I saw her, I’d know. That I’d somehow feel it.”

  “You are spirit, not flesh. Who was your mother in the last life, might be your daughter in the next. Or a stranger. Or your enemy. What is family relationship to a spirit? We are all brothers.”

  “Oh dear. Now you bring up reincarnation, just when I’m trying to focus on being practical,” Georgia mumbled. “But that’s a subject I’ll have to come back to another time. Alright. If that’s my mother, I’ll follow her now. Will you come and see me afterwards?”

  “If you call me,” said Norwen. “When you need me, I will always come, until you grow beyond need.”

  The woman had entered a house, tall and narrow, with rows of blind, dark windows. The door had swung shut behind her but was now rattling on its uneven hinges, blowing in the rebound of her haste. Georgia crossed the road and approached the door. It was highly polished but hung crooked and partly open. Georgia knocked and her hand passed through the frame. She shook her head, settled her mind, and knocked again. This time her fist made contact and the sound reverberated. The frame shook. The house peered down with a suspicious and disapproving frown.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Primo built under the tallest redwood where the branches wiped the clouds from the sky. He used the forest silences as one of his tools, his concentration as the other.

  The house grew slowly. He had meant it to be small, matching his new polished humility, but it began to stretch, shambling across a slope and leaning, a little lop-sided, towards the woodland stream. The harpy watched, unblinking.

  The roof was pointed, with a puffing chimney, as forest cottages have in fairy tales. There was no hearth within and certainly no logs cut from the trees that breathed down upon him, which he would never chop or burn. But there was a little soft blue smoke rising from the chimney all the same, which seemed to dance in the breeze, whether there was a breeze or not.

  The windows were large and varied and reflected the sunshine and the dappled green shade. Inside there were three rooms. That was two more than Primo had ever had before. Then there was a long corridor, which led nowhere, but which refused to fade and was arched in leaf. It led directly from the smaller room. It held expectation, as yet unfulfilled.

  The main room, which was surprisingly large, was the space for living, for sitting at ease and for thinking. It was bright because of the number of windows, and it was carpeted in forest flowers. It was large enough for the harpy to enter and roost should she wish, and it was furnished with comfortable chairs and cushions.

  The next room was his bedroom and the bed was big and soft and smelled of loam. It was cooler and its corners were mysteriously shaded, although a window stretched across one wall and viewed the trees as if they were eavesdroppers to his dreams.

  The smallest room with its domed entrance to the blunt ended corridor, housed a pool. It was a woodland pool, pebble based and fronded in water fern, and very beautiful. The deeper end was busy with tadpoles and algae, the gentler bank as transparent as silvered mirror. The pool’s centre reflected not the ceiling above, which was black beamed and white plastered in cottage style, but the trees outside and sometimes the harpy as she roosted in their branches.

  He had never been as satisfied with a home, and rediscovered pride, being delighted with his own building powers and the growth of his own spirit which it demonstrated.

  “Australians are all rich, aren’t they?” said Sophie.

  “Everyone of us a millionaire.”

  “I just meant it’s an affluent country.”

  “I only said I wanted to do some shopping in Siena,” said Wayne. “Get something to send home to my mum. Okay, Siena’s expensive but I have to get her something. Don’t you ever buy presents for your mother?”

  Sophie paused. She liked Wayne’s sheepish grin. She didn’t want to spoil the mood. “Not anymore. I used to. She’s dead.”

  “Sorry.”

  “We will drive into Siena again this morning,” Romano interrupted them. “Aperitivo at the Piazza. Who wants to come, be ready in twenty minutes.”

  Cinnamon shadows and apricot lights, a gentle, whispering antiquity, the endless secrets of old stone. Siena’s medieval beauty was Julian’s inspiration. “I shall buy material that colour when I get home. Silk I think, a raw matte maybe, or slub perhaps. I shall swathe pillars. I shall make lamp shades. I shall weave tassels.”

  “Cool,” said Wayne. “I had a shirt that colour once.”

  They wandered the streets, Romano’s wide-eyed little group, and finally settled at the café tables in the piazza. “And that dear little urchin Bacchus. Cherubs everywhere. Darlings, such cornucopias of fruit and medieval plenty. I’ve never seen such opulent carvings. As soon as I get home, I shall redecorate.” Julian was reverent. “Hobgoblins and g
argoyles. Baby seraphim with soft bare bums. Fauns and satyrs. Heraldic banners.”

  “So this is where it all happens,” sighed Wayne.

  “The palio?” Romano smiled. “More than a month away. Do you contemplate staying that long perhaps?”

  Wayne grinned and blushed. “Well no. I mean, of course, not to take advantage of your hospitality and everything. But I’d love to see it some day.”

  “What appeals so much?” Romano ordered four Campari sodas. “The history? Every aspect of this place is steeped in history.”

  “Yes,” said Wayne, “of course the history is what it’s all about. Back in Oz, they call it antique after fifty years. Here it’s millennia. But especially the palio. They take it so seriously don’t they? I mean, they almost kill each other. Horses die.”

  “A little bloodshed certainly adds to the drama, if you are that way inclined,” said Romano quietly.

  “It must be so exciting, darling,” said Julian, who had never heard of it before coming to Italy. He leaned forward avidly over his glass. “Not the horses dying of course, but the costumes and flags and banners and everything. Genuine old uniforms and all that gold trimming. The thunder of horse’s hooves on these amazing cobbles. All that murderous rivalry. And this piazza, and the curly stone slopes. Like a serpent, just waiting to uncoil.”

  “Oh my God,” sniffed Sophie. “You’re such a tourist.” She turned to Wayne. “And you’re bloodthirsty.” It was flirtatious, and he smiled, and nodded. “You’d probably be pleased if they brought back jousting.” She turned again. She was going to ask Romano if he had ever brought her mother to the palio. Probably. They’d have done all the local festivals. Then she stopped. A woman had come behind her and was talking across her shoulder, addressing Romano in Italian.

  Romano looked up with a blank expression. He answered the woman briefly. The woman spoke again and Sophie caught the sound of her mother’s name.