by Claire Dyer
On the way into the studio, I pluck a dead rose bloom off the bush by the gate; the petals dissolve in my fingers.
Boyd
While Honey’s making coffee, Boyd sidles up to Trixie’s desk. Saturday shoppers are milling by outside; the sun is hot and high.
‘Hey,’ he whispers conspiratorially. ‘It’s Honey’s birthday next week …’
‘I know.’ Trixie smiles a tight smile as she says this.
‘… I was wondering if you could hide this for me in your desk?’ He holds out the envelope he was carrying when he got back to the office. ‘I can’t, you see,’ he continues, ‘Honey looks through my drawers sometimes and I can’t hide it at the house, we’ve hardly got enough space for our everyday things, let alone secret hideaway things, and I can’t really ask Vita, can I?’
‘No, you can’t. I guess,’ Trixie’s tone is somewhat sharp which makes Boyd look at her in surprise.
Then she says, ‘OK.’ Her voice is a bit softer this time and she takes the letter from him and slips it into her drawer. Boyd has written ‘To Honey’ on the front of it.
* * *
Days pass. Sunday comes and goes and then it’s Monday again, and Tuesday and then it’s Honey’s birthday. As they wake he tells her he’ll give her the present later. ‘OK,’ she says. ‘That’s fine.’
Trixie arrives at work and says, ‘Morning.’
Honey is on the phone. Boyd notices her delicate neck bent, the phone held between her shoulder and her chin as she carries on typing.
‘Hey there.’ Boyd looks up at Trixie and smiles. ‘Are those cream cakes I see?’
‘Sure are. I’ll pop them in the fridge for later.’
‘And have you got the you-know-what for you-know-who?’ He talks to Trixie from behind his hand like a pantomime villain and she smiles another tight, thin smile back at him.
She nods and, when she returns from the kitchen, gives him the envelope.
He props it in front of Honey’s screen and mouths ‘Happy Birthday’ to her. Honey’s smile is totally different from Trixie’s; hers is slow, wonderful, conspiratorial. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Trixie look away and busy herself moving papers around on her desk.
Then Honey says, ‘OK, yes. Thanks for calling. I’ll get on it straight away,’ and she puts the phone down and picks up the envelope.
‘What is it?’ she asks Boyd who’s hovering by her desk, his hands in his pockets jangling the change he keeps in there.
‘Open it and see.’
Honey gets her paper knife and slits open the envelope.
‘Oh my God,’ Honey says when she opens the birthday card. A business card falls out onto the desk, face up.
‘Look on the back of the card,’ Boyd says. He’s taken a hand out of his pocket and is stroking the back of Honey’s neck. They have long ago stopped pretending to Trixie, stopped trying to keep their relationship a secret. When this shift happened, Boyd can’t remember. One day only he and Honey had known and then suddenly, Trixie did and now Vita does too, obviously.
‘It says, “5.00pm, Wednesday 14th”.’
‘That’s your appointment then.’ Boyd is still stroking Honey’s neck. ‘Now turn the card over again.’
Honey reads it out. ‘It says, “Elizabeth Holland, Medium”. Oh, Boyd. This is fantastic! I’ve never been able to afford to go to one before. I love it.’
‘I knew you would.’
Boyd feels like a child who’s just got all his sums right in class.
‘I’ve met her,’ he says. ‘Elizabeth, that is. I went to her house. Couldn’t let her loose on you without checking her out first. She’s very lovely. I trust her to treat you gently.’
Honey pushes back her chair and wraps her arms around Boyd’s waist. She tucks her head under his chin and squeezes his ample frame saying, ‘Thank you. You know how much this will mean to me,’ into the folds of his shirt.
Then the phone rings and Trixie snatches at her handset and barks into the mouthpiece, ‘Hello. Harrison’s Residential. How can we help you?’
Honey
The three of them have settled into a comfortable routine in the house in Albert Terrace and Honey is more and more convinced that, although she’s not around much, Vita likes her. Vita is straightforward, outspoken and unafraid and Honey believes she knows where she stands with her; Vita will tell you if you’re pissing her off or, if you’re doing something that pleases her, she’ll tell you that too. Honey hadn’t expected to feel at ease here, and the fact that she does surprises her daily.
She also hasn’t had the dream again. She believes that, at last, she’s pushed it so far back in her mind that it can’t find its way out.
Boyd’s taken to spending the start of the day with Vita, which is fine as Honey gets to have her coffee and horoscope-check time without him. She can stretch out in bed and watch the early autumn mornings unfold outside the window while he’s downstairs sitting side by side with Vita doing the crossword.
From Honey and Boyd’s room, Honey can hear the rumble of their voices, the occasional sharp exclamation of joy or frustration and it makes the house seem more alive somehow. She imagines their heads close to one another, the sun inching through the lounge windows at the front of the house and the leather on the sofa creaking as Boyd shifts in his seat. She imagines them as old friends who have lived through difficult times and have come to an accord. She doesn’t doubt Boyd’s feelings for her nor does she mistrust Vita. From what she’s seen of her so far, she has no reason to and again, this surprises her. It is so different from how she felt when she first came here.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact she’d always felt like a visitor at Boyd’s flat, but they’re more on equal terms here, him and her; they are both guests and it’s a kind of respite. She knows he’s planning on them going back to the flat once the tax bill is paid and his finances are in order.
He’s been visiting his mother in the care home as regularly as he can but always returns from these visits subdued, and Honey doesn’t press him for information because she senses that the sadness he feels about his mother, and his father for that matter, go deeper than she first realised. She does sometimes wonder if he talks to Vita about it – she must know more of his history – but for some reason Honey doesn’t want to know if this is happening and so she lies in bed and thinks of other things as the two of them are downstairs and the day churns into motion.
Then Boyd comes back upstairs to get showered and dressed and he leans over the bed and kisses Honey long and hard on the mouth and places a giant hand on her head as though he’s blessing her and she’s strangely content: her head is safe in the sand, her heart is safe in his hands and she’s looking forward to the visit to the medium he gave her for her birthday because she has a suspicion that she will learn something which will only add to this contentment. Again, she has never felt this way before and this surprises her too.
And all is made much better because Vita has also agreed to a TV being installed downstairs. Boyd’s put it on the wall opposite the alcove in the kitchen and so, some evenings, when Vita gets home Honey is sitting there watching her soaps and Vita tuts and snorts with derision and says, ‘My Christ, whatever is this crap?’ and Honey laughs and says, ‘These soaps are the engine house of the country; they are mirrors reflecting us back at ourselves.’ And Vita snorts again and bangs about in the kitchen but Honey knows she’s not really cross; she can tell from the set of Vita’s shoulders and the way she bends her head as though she’s actually half listening to the programme.
And so it’s September 14th and Boyd and Honey are getting ready to leave work. Trixie’s said she’ll lock up and Boyd is giving Honey a lift to the medium’s house.
Honey’s horoscope this morning said, yet again, that she’d get news from far away but she didn’t give it much thought, she’s had this particular one many times before. But she was relieved when making the bed to find a penny that Boyd must have dropped. It was facing
heads up. This is a sign of good luck and the good luck hasn’t yet arrived. Honey is confident it will before the day is out.
‘Do you want me to wait for you?’ Boyd asks. His shirt is crumpled after a day sitting at his desk. He looks tired. They’ve just had a sale fall through and it’s never nice when that happens: all that work putting the deal together gone in an instant because someone somewhere down the chain has had a change of heart. House buying and selling is such a delicate balancing act: Honey’s come to realise it’s seventy-five per cent emotion and twenty-five per cent reason.
‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘You’re tired and I’d like to walk back if that’s all right. It’s a nice evening and the exercise will do me good.’
She’s not been running again since that fateful night back in the early days. She should do more, she knows, and so it will be nice to walk, and to be alone for a while too. It is all so different to how it was before. Life is, she’s decided, like a pulse, but it beats in a pattern you only recognise when you look back at it. It’s all about perspective, is life.
Boyd touches her arm. ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you at the house. I’ll have some dinner waiting for you if you like. Vita’s said she’ll be out this evening. She’s going to a friend’s exhibition in London, said she’ll be back late.’
‘Oh,’ Honey says. ‘When did she tell you that?’
‘Yesterday morning, I think,’ he replies.
Honey only hesitates for a second while she processes this information. She tells herself that it’s fine that Vita should tell him these things, that he should know them. And it is fine. It really is. Honey doesn’t mind. She has more than enough. She is happy.
But she looks round and sees that Trixie has stopped what she’s doing and is watching them. Trixie’s still wearing a plaster on her hand. Honey had asked her what she’d done and she’d said, ‘Just a silly accident in the kitchen.’
Trixie is obviously listening to them but Honey ignores this, she has more important things to do.
‘You ready?’ Boyd asks her.
‘Sure am,’ she says, picking up her bag.
She feels blessed: a good man loves her, she is beginning to like the woman who was his wife, she got this job because Trixie believed in her, she has a bed to sleep in and a roof over her head, she has a bank card and a phone that’s not pay-as-you-go, she enjoys her job and she is only twenty-eight. There is still much more before her than behind her. Life is good.
‘See you tomorrow,’ she says to Trixie who starts as if Honey’s made her jump.
‘Ah, yes,’ Trixie says. ‘See you tomorrow. Hope it goes well this evening for you – you know, the medium and all. Hope she doesn’t say anything upsetting. Remember what we talked about before?’
Honey laughs, but doesn’t reply. She’s still sure that the medium won’t, still sure that whatever she does say will confirm that Honey is in the right place at the right time doing the right thing, that she is still showing her best side to the world. It’s getting easier and easier to do this as each week passes. Sometimes she even wonders if she’s forgetting; she’s certainly becoming less watchful.
Boyd drives her to the other side of town and pulls up outside a nice house with a yellow front door. There are two bay trees in planters either side of it. The bay trees have been pruned to make almost perfect spheres.
Honey leans across and kisses Boyd. ‘See you later,’ she says.
‘Bye, my love. Hope you enjoy it.’
‘Thank you.’
Honey has no idea what is going to happen next. Maybe if she had, she would have stayed in the car and told Boyd to drive her home. Maybe she should have done so. Maybe she should have heeded Trixie’s warnings.
When she’d opened her card on her birthday, Trixie had been strangely quiet and then later, when they’d had their cream cakes and Boyd was out on a valuation, Trixie had said, ‘Fancy a cup?’
Honey was aware that some days it seemed all they did was make cups of tea or coffee, but they didn’t. These were random moments in their otherwise busy days.
‘Yes, please,’ she’d said.
Trixie had hesitated by the door, leant up against it and said nonchalantly, ‘I’ve heard so many remarkable stories about mediums, you know.’
‘Have you?’ Honey looked at up her.
‘Well,’ Trixie said, ‘there was this one friend of mine, albeit a number of years ago, who wanted to know if she’d met Mr Right. The woman she went to see said that she could feel the presence of an elderly relative asking to make contact. Apparently this woman had worn a blue housecoat. My friend knew immediately it was her grandmother. Well, anyway, this grandmother warned my friend off the man she was seeing. Told her he wasn’t what he seemed and that he would only cause her heartache. And she was right. My friend ended the relationship and two months later read in the paper that the chap in question had been arrested for embezzlement. Oh, and …’ Trixie paused.
‘Yes?’ Honey said.
‘… and,’ Trixie continued, ‘there was this other friend who went to one and was told not to park her car in the lay-by outside her house that Saturday night. Well, she ignored the warning, parked the car and was woken up by some boy-racer crashing into it. Of course, he was uninsured and the car wasn’t driveable for weeks. Just goes to show, eh? At least no one was hurt though, which is a mercy isn’t it? Does just go to show though.’
‘Oh, it does,’ Honey replied. She thought briefly of her superstitions; the bread, the salt, the penny, how in summer she searches for three butterflies together, and she believed every word Trixie said.
These are the things Honey notices when the door to Elizabeth’s house opens: the woman standing there is shorter than her; she has a round face and soft, curling, fair hair. She must be about fifty. She is dressed in a loose, stone-coloured, knitted tunic which she’s wearing over a white camisole and long, white, linen trousers. She has a pair of Birkenstocks on her feet. Her toenails are painted a pale shell-pink.
‘Hello,’ the woman says, stretching out a hand, ‘my name’s Elizabeth. People have always tried to shorten it to Beth or Libby or other names, but I like to be called Elizabeth if that’s OK.’
Honey shakes her hand. ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I’m Honey.’
‘Yes, your husband said you’d be coming.’
‘Ah, we’re not married actually.’
‘Oh, I see. He’s a nice man. I can tell.’
‘Yes, he is.’
Honey’s still standing on the doorstep. Behind Elizabeth she can see a hallway leading down to what must be the kitchen. Two rooms lead off to the right; the staircase is on the left. Elizabeth’s eyes, Honey notices, are a pale hazel; her smile is warm.
‘Come on in,’ she says, standing back a fraction.
Honey goes in. The house smells of lavender, she can see a scent diffuser on the hall table. In the background is the faint sound of music.
‘That’s David,’ Elizabeth says, laughing lightly. ‘Bit of a jazz fiend, I’m afraid.’
Honey doesn’t reply.
‘Come upstairs. I have a room set by. We can get some peace there. Would you like a hot drink?’
‘Just a glass of water, please.’
‘Let’s get settled and I’ll get you one.’ Elizabeth starts to climb the stairs. There is a doll in national costume sitting on each step, like a guard of honour almost. They are a kindly presence.
There are four doors leading off the landing. Honey presumes three of them must be bedrooms, one the bathroom. Prints of Beatrix Potter characters hang on the walls. At the end of the landing opposite the window is a full-length mirror. She catches sight of herself. For some reason she looks more afraid than she feels.
Elizabeth leads Honey into a small bedroom at the back of the house. In it is a single bed; its duvet cover has daisies on it, and there’s a bookcase and a pine dressing table. On the dressing table are about a dozen glass paperweights; their colours are vibrant and energeti
c. They imbue the room with a sense of movement. Honey had expected a less busy setting than this.
But then they sit, Elizabeth in a chair facing the back wall of the room, Honey in a chair facing her with the window behind her. Outside, the trees are noiseless, the evening hangs in the air. There is birdsong, the faint drone of the town’s traffic and from downstairs the faintest beat of David’s music.
‘So,’ Elizabeth says, touching Honey’s arm. Her hand is warm. She is wearing no jewellery other than her wedding ring.
Honey notices all these things, maybe to distract herself from the real reason why she’s here. Suddenly she’s worried about what she might be told.
‘So,’ Elizabeth says again. ‘You relax and I’ll go and get your water.’
She’s gone for a matter of moments and then she’s back. Honey hasn’t even had time to study the spines of the books in the bookcase.
Honey drinks the water and puts the glass down on the floor by her chair.
Elizabeth sits back down opposite her. They don’t speak for a while, the air in the room stretches and softens. Honey can feel the muscles in her neck lengthen, the breaths she takes are slow and measured and deep. This is a nice place to be, she thinks. Gone is the worry and fear. There is something about this woman that makes both these things disappear.
‘My dear,’ Elizabeth says, ‘we just need to wait. Someone will come, I know it.’
‘That’s fine,’ Honey replies. ‘There’s no rush.’
Elizabeth continues, ‘My sister used to live in Farnham …’
‘Oh,’ Honey says, not really sure what this has to do with her.
‘… but she moved, about ten years ago. I still miss her. She used Harrison’s to sell her house.’
‘Ah.’ Now Honey knows why she is telling her this.
‘She said she got really good service from them.’