Born to Be Trouble

by Sheila Jeffries

  What readers have to say about Sheila Jeffries’ books

  ‘Stunning. Beautifully written, with an exquisitely poetic narrative’

  ‘One of those rare books that stays with you long after you’ve finished reading it’

  ‘The most heart-warming book I have read in a long time. I did not want it to end’

  ‘Fabulous read’

  ‘One of the best books I have read. I couldn’t put it down’

  ‘Brilliant’

  ‘The prose is simply superb. When the sheer beauty of words can evoke tears, that’s the sign of a gifted writer’

  ‘Of all the books I have bought, this is the best’

  ‘I thought all the characters were brilliant’

  ‘A book to touch your heart’

  ‘Every page was a pleasure to read’

  ‘This novel is sweet and insightful and shows a good understanding of human emotions’

  ‘Spell binding’

  ‘I thoroughly enjoyed it and the insight into the afterlife was so interesting’

  ‘Sheila Jeffries is an amazing storyteller’

  ‘A truly unique book, one that I would highly recommend. I can’t wait for her next’

  ‘Deep insight and understanding into the pain and fear many people live with. I heartily recommend this book to everyone who is tired of the violence and anger in so many books now’

  To my brilliant cousin, a healer of souls, who passed into spirit on 15 April 2016, and who appears in this book as ‘Starlinda’.

  PROLOGUE

  1970

  Why am I doing this?

  Tessa looked down at her silver shoes, the pointed toes peeping out from the ruffles of lace around the hem of her satin dress. She waited on the pavement outside Monterose Church. The March wind surged through the tree tops, but on the lawns the pale green buds of daffodils were stiff and unmoving. Like aunties, Tessa thought. The church would be full of them – aunties in their Crimplene suits and portly hats. Watching her. Triumphantly.

  It was what they wanted her to do. Conform.

  As she waited for her father to ease himself out of the car, Tessa glanced down the road, and imagined herself running, in her silver shoes, her white veil flying, her bouquet of pink roses and freesias discarded in the gutter.

  Freddie manoeuvred himself out of the shiny black car. He felt awkward in unfamiliar clothes. Kate had insisted on him wearing a grey top hat. It felt like a cardboard cereal packet on his head, and he hardly dared speak in case he shook it off. He knocked it sideways getting out of the car. ‘I’m not wearing this blimin’ thing,’ he said, at the last minute, and chucked it back into the car.

  Tessa gave him a secret smile, and saw his blue eyes twinkle with pride as he looked at her in awe. She didn’t care about the hat. I can’t let him down, she thought, looking up at him adoringly as he took her arm.

  ‘You ready?’ he asked.

  She nodded. No, her mind screamed silently, I’ll never be ready for this!

  ‘Come on, you’re shivering.’ Freddie took her arm and walked her slowly down the flagstone path between two rows of yew trees.

  The vicar’s white robe billowed at the church door. Tessa was glad it was a new, young vicar, not the old Reverend Reminsy who had haunted her childhood. The new vicar had a quiff of boyish dark hair and enthusiastic cheeks. He obviously loved weddings.

  Tessa saw him dart inside and nod to the organist. The murmur of voices stilled like water settling, and the stones of the ancient church trembled with the energy of Widor’s Toccata. Music had the power to disturb Tessa. I will not break, she thought, watching her silver shoes taking her elegantly into church.

  Hats and flowers brightened the sombre interior. An unfamiliar fragrance of Pink Camay soap merged with the resident fustiness of old hymn books and candlewax.

  Why am I doing this?

  Tessa fixed her eyes on her mother who was in the front pew, her bright brown eyes shiny with emotion. Kate’s smile lit up the church when she saw her daughter in the fairy-tale dress, walking down the aisle with Freddie.

  This is Mum’s dream, not mine, Tessa thought. I’ve caused her so much worry over the years and she wants me to be happy and settled, and – normal – what she thinks is normal.

  As a teenager, Tessa had been haunted by a vision of her mother leaving. It had flashed into her mind on Kate’s birthday when she saw red roses in a vase on the table. ‘Freddie gave them to me,’ Kate said, her voice warm with joy. ‘He knows I love red roses. You smell them.’ Tessa had inhaled the fragrance, feeling the cool, pillow-like petals brush her cheek, and in that moment the vision had come. Her mother was leaving. The family were following her coffin into Monterose Church, and it was covered in red roses. The colour seemed darker, the perfume heavier, the sadness an unexplored, fathomless twilight.

  Tessa kept the disturbing vision to herself. But Kate had noticed her expression. ‘Don’t look so gloomy,’ she quipped. ‘Anyone would think it was a funeral, not a birthday.’ And when Tessa stared at her with tears glimmering in her eyes, Kate said, ‘For heaven’s sake, what’s the matter NOW? Why can’t you ever behave like a normal person, Tessa?’

  It hurt. Every time. But now, after the years of heartbreak, she was walking into church, a bride, a normal person. Despite everything.

  Tessa was aware of the heads turning to gaze at her, embroidered hankies dabbing tears from powdered cheeks. It’s what they wanted. To see their ugly duckling turn into a swan, Tessa thought, and imagined the shock it would cause if she turned and fled from the church like an escaping snowflake.

  The heavy oak door of the church was closed. Its iron latch clanged into place, and an expectant pause settled over the congregation.

  In the moment between moments, a small white dog appeared in the church porch. He sat at the door and barked. His bark echoed in the stone porch, but the door stayed closed, so he stretched his throat and howled.

  Tessa heard him, even as the words of the first hymn were being sung lustily by the army of aunties. The spirit of her little dog, Jonti, who had so often warned her of danger, was warning her now, from beyond the grave. She glanced at Freddie. He’d heard it too. His eyes looked startled, then worried.

  The satisfied gleam in her mother’s eyes brought her back into place and she found herself standing at the altar looking up at Paul. She searched his eyes and saw only hunger. An unnatural hunger, thinly packaged in a shell of pride. And somewhere in those hazel eyes the expectations hovered like sparrowhawks waiting for a twitch of movement. Waiting to pounce.

  In a dream-like state, Tessa heard herself saying, ‘I do’ and ‘I will’. She saw herself floating down the aisle with Paul like a captive fairy, picking her way through a sea of smiles and flowers. A thought echoed from the abandoned caverns of her mind. It’s wrong. Paul is the wrong man. What have you done, Tessa? What have you done? And why?

  The wedding was over. The bells of Monterose Church pealed joyfully. A slate-grey sky hung low over the town, the light bruised with storm clouds, and the West wind drove barbs of rain into the stone porch. It lifted Tessa’s veil as if wanting to snatch her back to the distant shores of Cornwall. She smelled salt and heather. She saw Art wading out of the sea, his intense grey eyes burning into her soul. I love you, Art, she thought fiercely. I will carry you in my heart, always and forever.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  Hippies 1964

  A bus painted in psychedelic colours rumbled through the streets of Monterose. A few heads turned to watch it disapprovingly. Were the hippies invading the quiet market town?

  ‘That girl in the front – that’s Tessa Barcussy! What’s SHE doing with the hippies?’

  ‘Di
sgusting. I mean – it’s disGUSTing. A nice girl from a nice family – and she went to Hilbegut School. Now look at her!’

  ‘But then – she always was a bit odd – wasn’t she? Moody and rebellious.’

  ‘Keep an eye on them. If they try and set up camp in Monterose, there’ll be trouble.’

  ‘Pity. Freddie and Kate are such good people. Sad they’ve got a daughter like that – and the other girl, Lucy – she went wrong too.’

  The bus rattled on, over the railway bridge, and up the lane, the tyres running softly on carpets of golden leaves that were drifting and zigzagging along the lane.

  ‘Are we nearly there?’ Art asked. ‘She’s running out of petrol.’

  ‘Half a mile,’ Tessa said. Her pale blue eyes were luminous and bright as she looked at Art adoringly. His tanned arms with a fuzz of sun-bleached hairs, his mane of hair that always looked as if he was flying over the Atlantic on a surf board. His frayed denim jacket, the patchwork pockets bulging with a conglomeration of things he used, and things he loved, like the photo of Tessa walking out of the sea in her sea-green bikini. Art had two other photos, one of his gran, the other of a dog he’d loved as a child. He’d got cards with friends’ contact numbers on them, a card with a recipe for a Cornish pastie, and cards with poems in tiny writing. All crammed into an Embassy cigarette packet with a flip lid. His diary was stuffed with pressed flowers from the Cornish cliffs where he and Tessa had first made love on a magical day in summer.

  Leaving Cornwall had been a wrench for both of them. It had taken three days to drive Art’s converted bus to Somerset; the roads were narrow, meandering through towns and villages, over Bodmin Moor and Dartmoor, crossing narrow stone bridges over bubbling streams, and when it rained the autumn leaves stuck to the windscreen like splashes of paint. Art couldn’t get the windscreen wipers to work, and Tessa had to lean out and clear raindrops and leaves from the glass. They’d camped on Dartmoor, surrounded by wild ponies, granite and heather.

  Somerset felt civilised and flat after the grandeur of Devon and Cornwall. The fields were square, and the Levels stretched into the distance to the gentle blue hills of the Mendips. But to Tessa it was home. The air smelled of cows and apples. The hedges were laden to the ground with bright berries, and covered in a creeping plant known as old man’s beard, which shone like foam in the sun. It was a long time, six months since she had been home, and there were issues to be settled with her parents. Number one was Art, and his lifestyle. Number two was her decision to quit college and set up home in the bus with Art.

  ‘How do you know which field it is?’ Art asked. ‘We don’t want to park up in the wrong one.’

  ‘Of course I know, Art, I grew up here,’ Tessa said. ‘My sister and I ran wild in these fields. It’s this next one – where the stream rises. Stop and let me get out. I’ll open the gate.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Tessa climbed down from the bus. The hedges leaned over her in a tangle of blackberries and coloured leaves of field maples with their bunches of winged brown seeds. Strands of vivid orange bryony meandered through the branches. The gate looked as if it hadn’t been opened for years. The bleached seed heads of grasses had woven themselves through the bars; columbine and ivy curled around the posts and along the top bar.

  Tessa paused, gazing at the field. It was hers, and she found that hard to believe. A precious square of Mother Earth. She could do whatever she liked with it, or in it. And no one could tell her what to do!

  The field was an unexpected inheritance, left to her by Ivor Stape, an eccentric pervert who had abused Tessa when she was only seven. She had run away from school to explore the Mill Stream, the words of Tennyson’s poem, The Brook, singing in her mind. It had filled her with a yearning to find the brimming river and to follow it to forever on that long ago May morning. Remembering the story her mother often told, of how Aunt Ethie had drowned in the Severn River, Tessa had been overwhelmed with sadness. In memory of an aunt she had never met she gathered cowslips and floated them on the stream. Finally the Mill Stream led her under a tunnel and into Ivor Stape’s gloomy garden where he found her shivering and soaking wet. Feigning kindness, he lured her into his secluded home, and there, in a shadowy room cluttered with old books and geological specimens, Ivor Stape had raped her. It had made her feel bad and dirty, and angry too. Angry at men. Tessa was given no understanding, no therapy or help to deal with it. Instead, the family forbade her ever to talk about it, classifying it as a shameful secret.

  Years later Art had finally healed her with his sensitive, romantic love-making. Ivor Stape, whose presence in the village had haunted Tessa’s childhood, died and left the field to her as compensation for his behaviour.

  Now she stared at the stretch of rough grass leading up to the woods, and the source of the Mill Stream was exactly as it had always been – a secret place under a clump of trees. Even above the throbbing engine of the bus, she could hear the water burbling in its chasm beside the hedge, pouring into the pipe under the lane. From there it flowed down to the water meadows, and on, towards the Mill. Tessa shivered. She wasn’t going to think about the Mill and the man who had abused her. She was going to be positive now. That’s what Art expected of her. Positive thinking. It didn’t come naturally to Tessa.

  She tugged at the gate, tearing the wiry tendrils of bindweed with her slim fingers. A silver charm bracelet dangled from her wrist and sparkled in the sun, and spots of colour shone from the beads and ribbons braided into her chestnut hair.

  Art jumped out to help her, leaving the engine running and the door of the bus open. Together they lifted the latch end away from its rusty iron hook, and the gate toppled inwards. A robin watched them from the field maple, and as soon as the grass was disturbed a buzzard came circling out from the wood.

  It was the cry of the buzzard that disturbed Tessa. She couldn’t at first identify the feeling that lodged in her mind like a cold pebble. She froze.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Art asked. His eyes were gentle and attentive as always. Yet Tessa felt she couldn’t share the illogical feeling with him. Putting it into words would make it ridiculous. So she resorted to one of her mother’s tactics. Laughter.

  ‘This gate just doesn’t want to open,’ she joked.

  ‘You’re dead right. This grass has got serious muscles.’

  ‘We need to cut it. What can we use?’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘The bread knife!’

  Tessa grinned. The bread knife got used for everything from turf-cutting to sawing the legs of jeans to make shorts. Art bounded into the bus and emerged brandishing it gleefully. He squatted down and attacked the tough stalks of grass along the base of the gate. ‘No wonder they used to make rope out of this stuff.’

  ‘The Romany Gypsies still do,’ Tessa said, ‘and they make baskets from grass and reeds, if they can’t get willow.’

  ‘You tug and I’ll saw,’ said Art. ‘We ARE going to get this damn thing open. I don’t want to leave that engine running too long. She’ll get too hot and we won’t be able to start her up again.’

  As he spoke, the engine of the bus died and the sudden silence pooled around them in widening rings. It spooked Tessa. This was not the way she wanted to be introduced to her precious piece of land. She would have liked to quietly walk there, by herself, get over the gate, stroll up to the source of the spring, and sit there alone, listening, watching, talking to the spirits of the land who might be there, tell them she was a friend, reassure them of her love. Breaking in felt like an invasion.

  A chill crept over her skin. Goosebumps appeared on her arms. The feeling hadn’t gone away. She looked towards the source of the stream, and stopped breathing as a shadowy figure stepped out from the trees. His cold, dark stare was warning her. ‘Something bad will happen here – something bad.’ He threaded the words into her mind, and she felt them go in. She tried to ignore them, tried to be brave and bright like her mother. What could possibly go wron
g in such a lovely place? she asked herself. Especially with Art by my side.

  ‘You are not welcome here.’

  ‘Ah – here’s the culprit,’ said Art at the same moment, pulling at a tenacious ivy root that had grown over the lower bar of the gate. It was too much for the bread knife. ‘Can you find the pruners, Tessa? They’re in the box under the bed.’

  Tessa battled with herself. She wanted to turn and run away like a child, run back home to the safety of The Pines and her mother’s kitchen. She wanted her mother to hold her and tell her everything was all right, tell her she hadn’t inherited a haunted field and a demon. She wanted her father to come striding up there with her, and sit by the stream and make peace. But what she wanted more than anything was to please Art. Not run away and leave him with a gate that wouldn’t open and a bus that wouldn’t start.

  ‘So where have they gone in that painted-up bus?’ Freddie asked, sitting himself down at the kitchen table. The old wooden top was now covered in a red and white gingham plastic tablecloth, Kate’s pride and joy. She hadn’t got to scrub it! And in the sink was a brand new red plastic washing-up bowl, another wonder of the age. Freddie wasn’t so keen on the plastic cloth. He missed running his fingers over the uneven wood that generations of his family had cared for with beeswax and elbow grease. He wanted to sneak his fingers under the plastic and smooth the knots and ridges of the pine wood.

  Kate put a mug of strong, sweet, steaming tea in front of him and opened the biscuit tin. ‘They were a bit vague about where they were going,’ she said. ‘I told them they could park here for a few nights, but Tessa seemed so jumpy about it. I was a bit hurt, to tell you the truth. She wanted to come home, but it felt as if she couldn’t get away fast enough.’

  ‘Ah – ’tis him,’ Freddie said. ‘That hippy she’s with. She’s got stars in her eyes over him.’

  ‘I made Tessa’s bed up so nicely with clean sheets, and she hasn’t seen her bedroom since we decorated it,’ Kate said, ‘but she wouldn’t even go up there.’