(1990) Sweet Heart

by Peter James

  ‘Sorry,’ Laura said, looking lamely at the cord. ‘Forgot to hook it back.’

  Tom turned the pork chops and sausages over on the barbecue. Fat spat and sizzled on the red coals. He prodded a couple of the jacket potatoes, gave each of the sweetcorns a half turn, blinking against the searing heat and the smoke, stood back unsteadily and had a gulp of his wine. He could see the glow of the lamps and the shadowy figures at the table fifty or so yards away, but the darkness and the booze made it hard to make out much more.

  A pair of hands slipped around his waist. ‘Hi,’ she said, quietly, simply. He smelled her perfume, felt the light pressure of her hands.

  ‘Not quite done yet,’ he said, turning round.

  Laura’s eyes were locked on his, her mouth smiling quizzically in the faint glow of the coals. ‘I like looking at you,’ she whispered.

  He smiled, embarrassed.

  ‘I often see you across a room at a party, looking at me. I like it when you look at me.’

  Her fingertips brushed against his, then her fingers curled around his, squeezing them gently. He glanced over towards the table. Shapes, just shadowy shapes; he and Laura would be shadowy shapes too. He hoped.

  Laura stretched up on tiptoe and placed her lips against his, soft lips, much softer than Charley’s, he thought, before pulling back, taking her wrist and leading her behind a tree. They kissed, longer this time, and he pressed her against the tree, filled with a sudden urge of drunken lust. He slipped his hand inside her jacket, inside her blouse, ran his fingers over her breasts while she ground her pelvis against his growing hardness. He drew away and squinted mischievously at her. ‘What are we doing?’

  ‘Having a snog.’ She smiled petulantly then grasped the back of his head and kissed him again. His hand wandered under her skirt, over the nylon of her tights and the smooth skin of her stomach, then slid inside her tights and over the bare skin of her buttocks. He started trying to pull her tights down.

  She shook her head, still keeping her lips to his, murmuring. ‘Uh oh, no!’

  He broke away and glanced furtively round the tree. ‘We could have a quick knee trembler.’

  ‘No!’

  He fumbled with her tights.

  ‘Stop it!’ she said. ‘I smell burning.’

  He turned to the barbecue. Flames were leaping up around the chops. ‘Shit!’

  ‘I think I’d better get back and join the party,’ Laura said. ‘Which way’s the loo?’

  ‘The least grotty one’s at the top of the stairs, turn left, second door on the right.’

  They began to sing happy birthday as Charley brought the cake out. The baker in the village had made it. There was a legal-looking scroll on the top and the wording ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOM’ visible through a forest of candles. The wind blew most of them out and Tom the rest. There was a roar of applause and raucous shouts of ‘Speech!’

  His face became a flickering blurr.

  She felt a deep sense of unease. The smell of the barbecue disturbed her. Burning embers. The flames licking at the inky darkness. Silence pressed in around her. The smiling faces and the shouts and laughter faded.

  She had been here before. Seen flames here before.

  She saw the old man stumbling through the woods towards her. The girl climbing up towards the rock with the tin in her hand, crying.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts.’

  She looked round, startled. Hugh was sitting in Michael Ohm’s seat and was grinning at her.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. She shivered, rubbed her arms. ‘It’s cold. Do you think we should move inside?’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘Do you remember what you were saying in the pub, Hugh, about old spirits?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, taking out his pipe. ‘OK if I —?’

  ‘I love the smell, she said. ‘Have you ever been regressed into past lives?’

  ‘Under hypnosis?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He bit the stem and cocked his head slightly, his eyes narrowing. He lowered his voice. ‘I told you, there are a lot of amateurs around. Don’t get involved.’

  ‘I thought you believed in reincarnation.’

  ‘I don’t believe in playing games with the occult.’

  ‘Games?’

  Wisps of dry ice were curling through her veins. Hugh was looking around uneasily. ‘Sorry about the car,’ he said, abruptly changing the subject.

  Car. Triumph. Car. Gum. She put her hand out to her glass and it was shaking so much she nearly knocked it over. Her cheeks felt red.

  ‘I ought to pay you a fee for parking,’ he said.

  ‘No. Not at all. It’s — you can leave it, really.’ There was a minty taste in her mouth. Gum.

  There was a thud. A clatter. Hugh bent and picked up her fork.

  ‘Oh, thanks —’ She wiped it with her napkin. ‘Please, leave the car for as long as you like.’

  ‘A few more days would be helpful.’ He lit his pipe with an old Zippo. A gust whipped hot ash from it and he clamped his hand over the bowl. ‘Have you done much exploring around the area yet?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘This is a very interesting part of the world. It’s riddled with old energy lines. Used to be considered quite fey.’

  ‘Witches on broomsticks?’

  ‘That sort of thing.’ He grinned and sucked on his pipe. ‘Have you been to the Wishing Rocks?’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘It’s a pretty walk. You go up through the woods the far side of the lake, take the right fork after the marshy bit and carry on.’

  ‘Why are they called Wishing Rocks?’

  ‘They’re pagan holy stones — I don’t know how they got them up there, unless they were hewn out of the hill — and the locals had a superstition that if you wanted something really badly you took the rocks a present.’

  ‘A sacrifice?’

  His pipe had gone out. ‘No, not a living sacrifice, but it had to be something personal.’ His lighter clanked and he sucked the flame down into the bowl of the pipe. She sniffed discreetly as the thick blue smoke drifted over her head. ‘And if you wanted your love to be eternal you engraved your names on the Sweethearts’ Rock. If your love ever faded, you took the rock a token and it made everything OK again.’

  She was silent for a moment. ‘What does that rock look like?’ she asked.

  ‘You can’t miss it. It’s shaped like a heart.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Charley slept badly. The cacophony of birds and the roaring of the water and the churning thoughts in her mind kept her awake.

  Tom lay awake too, tossing beside her. He got up and went to the lavatory. A while later he got up again, went into the bathroom and came back with a glass that was fizzing.

  ‘You OK?’

  The bed sagged as he sat down. ‘Jesus. It was quieter in London. Can’t we shut those bloody birds up?’

  The sky was grey, stormy, and a strong wind was blowing. There was the clatter of a bicycle and tyres scrunched on gravel. Ben ran to the bedroom door, barking.

  ‘Newspapers,’ Tom said.

  ‘Did you enjoy last night?’

  ‘Good fun.’ He screwed up his eyes.

  ‘You and Laura were talking a lot.’

  He stirred the Alka Seltzer with the handle of his toothbrush, drank some and grimaced.

  ‘What were you talking about?’

  He was silent for a moment, then mumbled. ‘Nothing in particular.’

  The window rattled and a gust of chilly air swept across her face. ‘The weather’s not so nice for your cricket,’ she said.

  ‘It might clear up.’

  ‘What are you doing this morning?’

  ‘I thought I’d start stripping the drawing room. There’s no point in painting anything while they’re messing around with the floorboards.’

  Charley yawned and looked around the bare walls and the raw beams and the low, uneven ceiling. It still felt strange in this room, felt
each morning as if she were waking in a hotel and not home.

  ‘Back to work for you tomorrow,’ she said. ‘End of holiday.’

  Tom nodded. ‘Are you in London this week?’

  ‘Tomorrow. I’m going to see mother, and I said I’d help Laura for a couple of hours. The money’s useful,’ she added defensively.

  ‘It doesn’t even cover your train fare.’ He went to close the window.

  ‘I’ve seen some very inexpensive kitchen units. I meant to tell you.’

  ‘Is there any point at the moment? We might as well wait.’

  ‘It’s so dreary in there. It’s going to be years before —’

  He ducked through into the bathroom. The bath taps gushed then the sound changed to the hiss of the shower.

  She raised her voice. ‘I really wish I was still working.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m fed up not having any money. I’m guilty all the time about spending anything.’

  He poked his head through the door. ‘It’s not forever. After we —’ He hesitated. ‘You know, have kids, you can go back again.’

  ‘Not to my old job.’

  ‘Your old job was killing you.’

  ‘I liked it.’

  She had liked the pressure. Her boss, who designed fashion accessories, had been a workaholic and it was infectious. She was expected in the office at seven and rarely got home before eight. They travelled somewhere in Europe at least once a fortnight, to the States twice a year and occasionally to the Far East, buying, exhibiting, looking. It had been fun. And well paid.

  ‘A couple of new units and a lick of paint and the kitchen’ll be fine until we can afford to do it properly.’

  ‘If you put your mother somewhere cheaper, we could afford to do a hell of a lot more now.’

  ‘I hope you remember that one day when your father’s old and infirm,’ she said angrily.

  The first rock loomed our of the woods above her. She climbed over a fallen birch and stopped at the edge of a small clearing to get her breath back. The woods were dark and hemmed her in; they spooked her. Ben stopped, maybe sensing something too, and nuzzled his head against her leg.

  She was the furthest she had been up here, beyond the point where she had met the old man, Commander Letters … or imagined him … or seen a time warp, a freak of the atmospherics. Or had met someone totally different, an innocent old codger with a fishing rod and had passed on his message to the wrong person.

  She was nervous of meeting him again.

  A shadow moved in the darkness through the trees, moved steadily, came out to greet her and she shrank back, goosepimples creeping over her flesh, until she realised it was just a bush behind a tree moving in the wind.

  Two eyes watched her from under a dock leaf. Then the rabbit turned and scuttled through the undergrowth. Ben did not notice. She patted the dog, felt comforted by his company, by his hair, his warm body.

  ‘Good boy,’ she murmured.

  The track ahead was through bracken. She climbed on, under the overhang of the rock, past a narrow fissure which reeked of urine and where there was a used condom lying on the ground. Behind, a long way back, she thought she heard a child shout and a woman’s voice reply.

  Then she could see the second rock a short distance above, and she stopped. There was no mistaking this rock, no saying it was just another rock and maybe …

  Heart-shaped, distinctly heart-shaped. It sat at the top of a short escarpment silhouetted against the boiling sky.

  It was the rock she had seen in her regression.

  She stared for a long while, trying to remember, to think back to childhood, to the outings in the country she had had with her mother. On Sundays they took a bus or a train to the country. However hard up they had been, her mother had insisted on a weekly treat. Maybe they had come here one Sunday? Or seen it in a film? Television? A book? Hugh said it was an ancient monument, a religious stone. Maybe she’d seen it in a magazine? A documentary?

  She bit her lip and climbed a steep narrow gully up through the escarpment, scrambling over several smaller rocks. She reached the top and stood in the open, on a bracken-covered knoll with the heart-shaped rock in front of her and shrubbery behind.

  She gulped down air, staring at the view; the buffeting wind made it hard to stand still. There was a panorama across the treetops in every direction except straight ahead which was obscured by the rock. Fields and woods and spires, pylons, farms, several large houses, a glinting swimming pool in the garden of one, a tennis court. She could see part of the lake, and the white columns and conservatory of Yuppie Towers.

  The rock was a massive granite lump, with deep cracks and patches of lichen, rising out of a bed of dried bracken. It was covered in names and initials and messages, crudely carved, mostly weathered and barely distinct. P loves E. Chris l. Lena. Kenneth/Elizabeth. Anna l. Lars. Mary-Wilf. Arthur Edward loves Gwennie. D loves BJ.

  D loves BJ.

  She looked closer.

  D loves BJ.

  The initials she had stared at in the regression as if she had known them.

  She touched the rock; it felt, smooth, cold. Silent. Ben loped around below, crunching through the bracken. Up here was silence. Only the wind. She read the initials again.

  Coincidence? Tricks of the mind? Like the chewing gum? The stables? The man with the fishing rod?

  D loves BJ.

  The tin. The tin she had carried up here in her regression. If that was here too? Her heart was hammering.

  Chinese box, Tom had said with a grin. The Chinese box was a delicacy. You buried a tin full of maggots in the earth, with no food. When you dug it up a fortnight later the maggots would have eaten each other and there would be one left, fat, juicy, the survivor. You ate him.

  She could remember the spot. There, barely ten feet away in the shrubbery. She went over to the dense undergrowth. Something was glinting. Excitement rose as she parted the bushes then fell as she saw it was just glass from a broken bottle. She cleared it and knelt down.

  This spot here.

  She stood up and walked away, feeling foolish. She gazed at the view, tried to fight, but slowly she was drawn back, slowly she walked across and knelt again. This time she began to dig with her hands, the sandy soil packing under her nails. Ben arrived and licked her face, thinking she was playing some great game.

  ‘OK, boy, help me dig! Big bones buried!’

  He sat and scratched himself.

  She dug down several inches, felt something hard which grazed her finger, and she clawed the soil away around it until she could see that it was a piece of flint.

  She widened the hole, winced as she scraped her hand on a sharp stone. She dug beneath it, felt the cold slime of a worm stuck to her fingers and shook it free with a grimace.

  Stupid, she thought, standing up. Daft. Should have brought a spade. Need a spade. She shook some of the sandy mud from her hands and stared at the small molehill she had made. Her watch said quarter to eleven. A spot of rain struck her face. With her boot, she shovelled the earth back into the hole and trod it flat, then hurried, half walking, half running, back to the house.

  It was past twelve when she got back to the rock, her lungs aching, perspiration guttering down her body.

  She sat for some minutes listening to the silence, the wind. Blue crevasses were appearing in the grey sky and it was getting brighter. She turned the trowel over in her hands; the rusted old tool was slightly bent and there was a crust of earth on the blade.

  She glanced round. Ramblers in orange waterproofs had trudged up the track behind her, but they had turned off at the fork. Her hair thrashed her face. A voice inside her whispered Go back! Forget it!

  She went to the shrubbery and knelt. Her pulse tugged at the base of her right thumb, as if someone was pinching at the skin. She felt a weird throbbing up her right arm and a tickling at the back of her throat. She glanced around once more, then began to dig.

  Half an hour late
r the sky had brightened a little more. She had dug a crater eighteen inches deep and was wondering whose land this was and whether people were allowed to come along and dig holes. Did it belong to some farmer? The National Trust? Was an irate gamekeeper going to march out of the trees?

  Ben had gone off somewhere and she felt very alone. Exposed. The silence was eerie. Forget it, there’s nothing. No tin. She rammed the trowel into the earth, more in frustration than an intention to go on digging, and a metallic clank rang out.

  She froze.

  She raised the trowel an inch and pushed down again. The clank again. Duller.

  She began to dig more carefully, feeling her way around the object, then dumped the trowel and used her hands. Something sharp grazed her finger and there was a trickle of blood in the mud. She dug with the trowel again, cutting the soil away on each side.

  Then it was free, and she levered out a small mud-caked object. It was light, weighed scarcely more than the earth that was stuck to it. Something inside rattled, rattled again because she could not hold it steady.

  She scraped the mud away with the blade of the trowel. Pitted metal showed through. A small square tin, three inches across and an inch deep. In parts the rust had eaten almost through it. She closed her hand around it, felt the edge. She could hear Ernest Gibbon’s voice, probing.

  What are you carrying? Why are you burying it?

  It was this tin she had been carrying. Shiny and newer, but this tin. She was certain. And she was afraid to open it.

  She looked into the crater. Two halves of a worm wriggled at the bottom.

  Sometimes when you open the tin the maggot’s bigger than you think.

  The lid was held on by pressure. She tried to pry it off with her hands, but it would not budge. She used the blade of the trowel as a lever and twisted. The edge of the lid curled upwards then came free with a pop and a faint hiss of trapped air and fell into the hole.

  A heart-shaped locket lay in the tin.

  She stared at it, transfixed. An inch-high enamelled heart, ruby red, with a tarnished gold chain which spilled out and slithered down over her wrist, icy cold. It glinted dully in the sunlight that broke through the cloud. She blinked.

  She knew this locket.