She’s only been gone three weeks, she’s had longer holidays, but she knows there will be flowers, and chocolates and hugs to greet her as if she’s been away for six months.
Grace also knows Alec is going to be an utterly unbearable fusspot, clucking about her like a mother hen, shadowing her every move, asking her every thirty seconds if she’s okay, and she will have to bite her tongue and tolerate it until he gets it through his head that she really is fine and she really will be safe to leave on her own all day while he goes to work.
Hopefully, for both their sanities, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of days, a week at most.
There are indeed flowers, and chocolates, and a bottle of fine red wine, and Alec greets her with a bear hug so tight she fears for her ribs.
She doesn’t mind him touching her. Alec is the most unthreatening person she’s ever known. He radiates only warmth and love, and it comes from his heart and his soul, the only man who understands her.
Enclosed in his arms, tight and safe, she can’t help but burst into tears, and sobs against him until her chest aches and her throat burns.
He pecks a series of small kisses to her forehead and holds her at arm’s length to look into her prickling wet eyes set in a pale blotchy face.
He’s been crying too, and his eyes are all watery and red. He presses his palms flat against her hot cheeks.
“You silly bitch! What were you thinking? You scared the living FUCK out of me!”
A solid berating, tempered a little by being delivered in his sweetly effeminate tone and with a petty stamp of his foot.
“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t want … I wasn’t supposed to –” She breaks away from him and goes to stand at the window, to look out over the mass of grey slated rooftops. “I thought it would be … peaceful. I thought I would just fall asleep and that would be it. I’d just drift away.”
“Got that wrong though didn’t you, baby?”
“Yeah.”
He places his hands on her shoulders, a heavy comforting weight, and rests his cheek against her hair. “Why couldn’t you talk to me, Gracie? That’s what best girlfriends are for, right? Why did you feel you had to bottle everything up until –?”
“Because it would mean unloading my problems onto you, and that old saying about a problem shared is a problem halved is just bollocks. It simply means more people have more problems.”
She grabs his hands and pulls his arms across her chest like a solid shield and they stand together staring out of the window at the traffic in the street below.
He kisses the top of her head. “Love you, babe,” he says.
“Love you too.”
And she does. Alec Simpson is the only man Grace truly loves and trusts with her life. He has, after all, been her saviour on more than one occasion, despite having problems of his own.
Granite city, granite attitudes. No room for namby pamby poofters here, ye ken?
Even in a modern city like Aberdeen, old fashioned prejudices rear their ugly heads, and so when he goes out, although always dressed and groomed to perfection, he strives to maintain a low profile, makes an effort to act ‘straight’, to fit in, because he doesn’t want to risk being dragged behind the bins again and given another beating.
“Do you think these shiners make me look too butch?” he said through his split lip, squint nose and swollen cheek.
Behind closed doors, however, free to be himself without danger of reproach or judgement, his gayness shines, both Julian and Sandy reincarnated into one body. As camp as a row of pink tents, he is flamboyant and eccentric with a penchant for the Polari, he calls Grace ‘ducky’ and ‘sweetie’ and wears pink Marigold gloves to do the washing up. He always has time for a girlie chat, a cuddle and a glass or three of wine.
“So what happens now?” asks Alec. “Have you been chucked out to fend for yourself … like last time?” He affects a shudder. “I don’t think I could cope with that again. All that bleach!”
Grace holds onto his hands. “No. Not like last time. You have no need to worry.”
Alec blows out a wet raspberry. “Now where have I heard that one before?”
“I mean it this time. I have a new therapist. Everyone has nothing but good to say about him. He’s young and keen, and open to new ideas, and we’re going to try something new. He thinks he’s found a way for me to … to deal with things in a way that works with me rather than against me.”
“He’s not going to try and put you on any drugs is he? You know what will happen. They’ll turn you into a zombie –”
“No. No drugs.”
Alec slaps his hands to his cheeks in a decent impression of the Home Alone kid. “Oh dear God, please not ECT, don’t let them –”
She pulls his hands from his face and holds them together, prayer-like in front of him. “No. Definitely no ECT either. No zombies or brain frying. His strongest prescription is for camomile tea and meditation.”“
“So what’s left?”
“Just … talking.”
Alec curls his top lip. “Talking? Who to? To him? What about?”
“Anything and everything.”
“What’s so radical about that?”
“I have to do something special, something a bit odd.”
Alec’s eyes narrow and he looks at her down his nose. “Oh yes.”
“I said odd, not kinky, you filthy perv, so get that idea right out of your head.”
Grace feels a laugh bubbling up, because now she’s going to say it out loud, what she’s agreed to sounds totally ludicrous.
“I have to create an imaginary friend,” she says. “A pretend someone with whom I can discuss all my problems, my fears, my indecisions, anything that’s troubling me. We get together either face to face, imaginarily, or I use a prop, like the phone, and we simply talk them to death.”
Alec’s entire face curls up like a furled umbrella. “You’re joking, right? What sort of buggery bollocks quackery is that? Has he got unicorn milk on special offer as well?”
He can see from her well maintained deadpan expression that she is not joking. Far from it. He looks at her sideways. “You think it will work, don’t you?”
“I don’t know, but what harm can it do? We’ll have to wait and see how it goes.” She kisses his fingertips. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained, eh? Cup of tea? I’m parched.”
In the privacy of her own room, snuggled in bed with the fat grey tomcat, Mr Pickles, in her lap, Grace sips at a cup of hot chocolate and thinks back over her meeting with Dr Mal.
“How do I go about conjuring up an imaginary friend?” she says. “Kids seem to manage it easily enough. In fact, they don’t even have to try. They just sort of … appear. Adults though…? It’s positively discouraged. Frowned on even.” She takes a sip at the hot dark brown liquid. “I’ll be going against the grain. Normal people don’t like it when you do something different, something they don’t understand. I’m going to have to be careful how I do this. Keep it private or at least subtle. What do you think, Pickles?”
The cat blinks at her, twitches its tail, its opinion kept firmly to itself.
Grace finishes her drink, scrapes out the ring of melted marshmallow and sooks it off her fingertip.
“Waste not, want not.”
Now she has to clean her teeth, else the sugary residue from the marshmallows will do its dirty work while she sleeps.
But the duvet is so warm and cosy…
A quick brush, a rinse and a pee, and back to bed. Out goes the light. The bedside clock glows a ghoulish green in the dark, digital numerals showing ten past nine. The night is young, but she is exhausted.
In the ward, with all the comings and goings and the noise, meaningful sleep was a rare commodity often out of her grasp and she has a lot to catch up on, although she’ll probably be wakened again in an hour or so when Alec gets back from the cinema with his boyfriend, the too gorgeous to be true Denny.
Why are all the nicest, fittest, mos
t handsome, most domesticated men, all gay?
She knows their routine by now. They’ll have a bit of supper, probably a glass or two of wine, and then retire to Alec’s bedroom, which happens to be next to hers, and through the thin walls she will hear every squeak and moan and groan of their lovemaking. To them sex is a pure pleasure, and both are totally uninhibited as they bang each other senseless. Having someone able to hear them probably enhances their pleasure.
Lucky bastards.
How long has it been since she’s had a decent shag? A proper one mind, not the sort that came with a side order of cigarette burns and bruises?
She slaps her palms onto the covers, scaring Mr Pickles. He hisses and springs off the bed, seeking sanctuary beneath it. “For God’s sake, stop feeling sorry for yourself you daft cow, sex isn’t everything and love is an illusion. You don’t need either. Now do what Mal suggests, go find your happy place and your pretend friend.”
She pounds her head into her pillow and closes her eyes. “Where would I like to go? Back to that beach of course. Soft sand, palm trees, lovely blue water lapping at my feet.”
She tries to form the image, a tropical white stretch of sand, blue sky above, azure water shading into a deep jade. No. Not working. Try harder.
Nothing. It seems the harder she tries the further away the image goes, and the tighter her inner tension spring coils.
“Bugger it! You’re trying too hard. You have to relax. Try again. Do the breathing exercises.” She shifts herself, settles again. “Okay, here we go. Breathe in and… toes relax.” And out. “Legs relax.” And in. “Body relax.” And a deep, slow blow. “Mind … let go…”
Gradually an image comes to her, forming as if emerging from a morning mist. She breathes gently as if a stray breath will blow it away again.
The colours deepen and strengthen, and her surroundings solidify. What she sees, however, could not be further from the beach she is looking for.
It is day again, and the sun is warm on her eyes. Soft white clouds float over a sky of cobalt blue, teased along by a light breeze.
She is standing at a wall. Tall and imposing, it runs away left and right, as far as her eye can see, in an unbroken stretch of solid stone, thickly coated in green ivy and brambles. Too high to see over, and no footholds for her to use to climb up.
Out of curiosity she turns around to see what lies behind her, to see where she has come from … and she is back in her bedroom, in her bed, Mr Pickles on the pillow beside her, gazing at her with his bright green eyes.
“Well, that was … odd,” she murmurs.
Mr Pickles concurs with a flick of his tail and a knowledgeable miaow.
Chapter 5
“How’s it going?”
“It’s only been two days,” Grace says, sipping at her coffee. “Give me a chance.”
“Have you been doing the breathing exercises to help you relax?”
“As best I can.”
“And cutting down on the wine?”
“Erm … yes?”
“And how is the … visualisation going?”
“A bit hit and miss. I have been trying, but I can’t seem to hang on to the place I’d really like to be. It keeps slipping away. I was trying for a nice soft beach, something tropical, with clear blue water and palm trees and nice warm sun, but instead I got a huge stone wall covered in ivy and brambles. More Gothic than Goa. It was quite an interesting, if spooky, sensation.”
Dr Mal did a passable impression of the Simpsons’ Mr Burns, drumming his steepled fingers together and murmuring, “Excellent.”
“Shall I keep at it?” Grace says. “Even if it’s not going quite the way I want?”
Mal nods enthusiastically. “Oh yes, absolutely. It’s early days, so we should expect a few hiccups. Keep trying. I think you’ll find it gets easier and easier as time goes on.”
She tries. Every day she tries.
Every day for a whole week the blinds are drawn, the room warm, and Grace sits cross-legged on the carpet, eyes closed, shoulders and neck relaxed, hands folded loosely in her lap. She sucks a deep breath in, holds it for a count of five, lets it out in a slow even stream, just like Mal instructed, and feels the tension drain away.
And in. And out. And …
Nothing.
Every day she tries, and every day she fails, getting up to make herself a cup of tea instead
… until the weekend.
After a quiet Friday evening in, snuggled on the sofa with Alec and Denny watching a detective drama on TV, sharing fish suppers, bottles of lager and one of Denny’s rather ‘special’ hand rolled cigarettes, Grace is feeling particularly mellow, relaxed and ready for bed.
No sooner has her head hit the pillow than she feels reality slip away and she is transported back to the wall.
Not daring to breathe in case everything vanishes again, she turns her head slowly from side to side to follow the line of the wall. It runs off to a vanishing point so far distant it is out of focus. She is about to turn her head, to check what’s behind her, and stops herself.
“That’s what I did last time. Whatever you do Grace, don’t look back.”
She concentrates on the section in front of her, scanning back and forth until her eye picks out a thinning of the foliage. Half hidden by the leaves and prickles is an ornate gate, more than man height, its ironwork wrought and hammered into stylised flowers and birds and ears of wheat. The handle looks like a ring of twisted barley sugar, its black paint peeling, patches of rust showing through in places.
It is solid and cold in her hand. A slow turn, and the sneck on the other side lifts. A gentle push, and the gate swings on rusty hinges, setting up an ear-splitting squeal. Grace slips through and lets it swing closed behind her.
Gravel crunches under her shoes as she treads along a broad level path set between immaculately maintained herbaceous borders. The air carries the scent of flowers – roses, Sweet William, lavender, the perfumes heady and sickly sweet, made more so by the humid warmth of a late summer afternoon. Myriad insects buzz industriously - butterflies, bees, and the occasional damselfly.
Ahead is a tall conifer hedge, clipped flat and smooth, its top completely level, not a frond out of place. A perfectly executed arch is cut into its facing edge, and the path leads her to and through it, an arrow straight walkway dividing an area of grass as close and neat as a bowling green.
She squats to run her hand over the bright green closely trimmed blades. Soft, like velvet. Someone has worked hard to maintain a lawn in such a state of luxury. No notice telling her to keep off, and no one in sight, and so she takes off her shoes and walks out a wide lazy ring, letting the warm grass tickle her bare feet.
Then it is cold. Wet. This part of the lawn is in shade, drops of morning dew clinging to the leaves. They gather between her toes bringing about a disorientating unpleasant rush of déjà vu.
She shivers and hurries back to the path, puts on her shoes and continues onward to where the gravel walkway swells to a circle of stones, at the centre of which sits a fountain, a chubby stone child carrying a seashell on its back through which water spouts and dribbles into a reservoir, tinkling like a wind chime, catching the light and blinking rainbows at her. Beautiful.
Grace continues forward to another hedge wall and another archway. This one is more intriguing because whatever lies beyond is hidden in deep shadow.
Curiosity must, of course, be satisfied.
She steps through the archway to something totally unexpected, yet shockingly familiar. A cemetery, very neat, very tidy, laid out like… a garden. A garden of stones.
Rectangles of neat grass bounded by low railings, guarded by rough hewn moss covered crosses and obelisks, marble columns topped with serene angels, kneeling winged cherubs with their chubby hands clasped in silent prayer. A number of plain upright markers sit between table-like slabs. They are old, very old, the words and numbers on them all but obliterated by age and weathering. This is all too familiar.<
br />
A beam of sunlight has draped itself over the nearest flat stone like a tablecloth, warming it and illuminating the faintest of barely legible inscribed markings. She traces over the list of names and dates with her fingertips, like a blind man reading Braille.
“John Edward St John. Born January 15, 1712. Taken into Our Lord’s care February 2, 1713. A baby, barely a year old. How sad.”
Looking closer, she can just about make out two of the other names engraved above his. Two girls. Alice and Catherine. Twins. They too died in infancy.
She moves higher up the list. Seven names in all, four boys, three girls. Not one survived past its fifth birthday.
“This grave is filled with children. Their poor parents. How could they bear it?”
She tries to imagine the family if Death had not intervened, a proud mother and father watching from a distance as their happy thriving brood chased each other in innocent play across those immaculate lawns, laughing, tumbling, squealing with childish delight.
“Perhaps they are playing together wherever they are now.” She runs her hand across the sun warmed slab.
“Let’s see if it’s as solid as it looks.”
She smoothes her skirt over her legs, perches on the stone, giving it a little weight. Seems strong enough. She gives it some more. Still fine. Satisfied it isn’t going to give way under her, she shifts herself until she is in the centre of the pool of light, turns her face to the sun and lets it warm her closed eyelids.
Around her birds sing, insects buzz, and there is the gentle babble of running water from a nearby stream. So peaceful.
The parents must have been wealthy to afford such an idyllic resting place for those poor lost children, although all the money in the world would have made no difference. Where Death is concerned, the privileged truly are on par with the deprived. The Grim Reaper shows no discrimination, he is the ultimate equal opportunities advocate.
Her ears pick up a rustle in the long grass nearby. A curious rabbit maybe? She might risk one eye to peep at it, so as not to frighten it away.
In The Garden Of Stones Page 4