This aerial dragon spurred a recollection of a ritual with Ada she had not thought of for years. They lay side by side in the long grass of their tiny fenced backyard. (Ada did not possess a lawnmower and besides, she delighted in the flow of the shining green under wind and sun.) Ada held her hand, and silently they watched the procession of white forms, at first so high above her, and gradually, it seemed to Suzanne, under and even inside her. Every so often Ada would grip her hand tightly and ask in a tone earnest and hushed: “Do you see them? There! The dragon veins.” She waved a red-nailed finger and Suzanne strove to see the curved channels that conducted cosmic vitality to the earth. And vice-versa. For as above, so below, said the most basic precept of the Wicca.
Sometimes Suzanne did actually see the dragon veins -most often, when she was not striving to do so. Like insight, which her mother had in abundance, these visions were a gift. Once or perhaps twice, in her twenties, Suzanne had seen the entire physical world streaming away into light, so that birch trees were fronds of white-gold energy, and the solid earth beneath her a luminous sea. At the very point of merging with this unceasing flow, she grew fearful and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the familiar solidity of the world had returned, bark quite surely delineated from earth, and each rock sturdy in its own separateness. She experienced then an almost numbing sense of loss and a fumbling awareness that she had somehow failed. Whether this failure had to do with a lack of courage, or a refusal to surrender herself, she was unclear. She had, she supposed, an abiding anxiety that if she persisted in these moments of exalted transport, she risked either madness or death.
Ada had no such fears. And of course, Ada would have seen through all the murk to the essential plot of the Napier family. She had an uncanny ability to spy out lies and self-deception. I have the disadvantage, thought Suzanne, of being blinded by love. Or was she? For in the light of his children’s accusations, her mental image of Murdo had become undeniably tarnished. What if Gemma were right, and she not fallen in love with a man at all, but with a projected image of that man? What if she had fallen in love with what she took to be his life story? And now even that compelling narrative might prove to be false.
There was nothing she could do but wait to hear all sides. Wait for Callum; then wait for Murdo.
She had a sudden urge to look again at the photographs of Miranda. She leapt to her feet and pushed open the same door of the outbuilding she had used on her first visit. To her amazement, the interior was already lit. The oil lamp was gleaming on the table where she had previously found the boxes with Miranda’s puppets and the two photographs. The boxes were gone. Had Murdo taken them? But who had lit the lamp? Had Jeremy or Clara already been here this morning? Why would they leave a lamp burning?
Suzanne bent down to look beneath the table, where all was cradled gloom. She began to feel about on the earthen floor, but stopped when she smelled the unmistakable mustiness of mouse droppings. As she stood up, she heard something stirring in the loft. She turned sharply on her heel and saw flecks of straw floating down. Whatever had made the disturbance was definitely larger than a mouse or a rat.
“Is anyone there?” Had her voice quavered? If there was only one, she knew she could down an attacker within seconds. If there were two, she would be in trouble. She was certainly far enough away from the house that neither Jeremy nor Clara would hear her call.
He came down from the loft in a single bound. Suzanne staggered back; then immediately put herself on alert. He was young, extremely grimy, and rake thin in a T-shirt that was more holes than cloth and much-patched jeans. Oddly, he stayed crouched, like an ape, his arms dangling. Suzanne’s whole body was tensed. She was uncertain whether to run, yet his atavistic posture, the black streaks on his face, and the fixed stare of his unmatched eyes (one was an opaque, dead blue) kept her rooted where she stood. The young man too, stayed absolutely still, holding his crouched position. “What are you doing here?” she asked, striving to make her tone kind and non-challenging. For she feared he might be mad, or one of the lost children who these days took to the roads, lived in trees, took the names of ancient British tribes, sometimes even painted themselves with woad. Suzanne very much admired the young members of the ecological tribes, who put their half-naked bodies in the path of bulldozers in often vain attempts to stop the destruction of parklands, razed to make another sullen, clogged motorway. But some, like this one perhaps, were just solitary wanderers, haunting the edges of free festivals, taking bad drugs.
“Poor boy,” she nearly said aloud, for she understood she had no reason to fear him. He was so fragile, the straw clinging to his blond curls, his ribs showing through the riddled T-shirt. But even as she formed the words in her mind, he was circling her in a grotesque, shambling dance, as if she were the fire and he the worshipper.
“Stop it!” To her relief, he obeyed, stopping directly in front of her. Now, however, he assumed a grovelling position, like a chastised dog, his head cocked, an expectant, curious look in his unsettling eyes.
“Zoobly,” he said. “Mowkran howstater crack gum.”
And again: “Zoobly.” He lay flat on his belly, and stroked her bare feet under her sandals. “Zoobly,” he said, as she jerked away from him, shocked at how disturbingly erotic was his touch. She had to fight hard against the desire to bend down and take him in her arms, stroke his straw-littered hair.
“Callum!” It was Clara standing in the doorway. “I felt you were here,” she trilled, running up to the young man, who was on his feet now. As his features composed, Suzanne became aware of his striking resemblance to Clara. The twins embraced. Clara burbled in his ear. “Were you being naughty with Suzanne, you silly boy? Oh Callum, I’ve missed you so.”
He pointed to Suzanne. “Is she my new mother?” This was delivered in a ludicrous stage whisper. His eyes were wide in mock amazement.
My God, thought Suzanne, is everyone in this family a ham? Then: It’s Callum and he can speak perfectly well, and why was he making a fool of me?
“Don’t be silly, Callum.” Clara hugged her brother tightly. “She married Murdo,” she said in a kind of confiding aside that also struck Suzanne as slightly censorious. It sounded much as if she had said: Suzanne has done something stinking in the corner.
She was tempted once again just to walk away from this trio of idiosyncratic individuals. Just go away and come back to Murdo after they had decamped, with all their trickery and their theatrics. Callum came up to her and Suzanne tensed. If he speaks gibberish at me, she decided, I will slap his face.
“You are so pretty,” he said. “Why have you done this stupid thing?”
Suzanne was absolutely nonplussed. She could read nothing teasing or false in his face. His eyes were level with hers. The opaque one, she saw now, was blind.
Clara was chattering again, pulling at Callum’s arm. “Did you drive that bike of yours all the way from London? You’re disgustingly dirty. Go give Jeremy a kiss and then have a bath.”
“Will she bathe me?” he asked with a wink and a sly little smile at Suzanne.
“Callum!” Clara did this time look genuinely irritated. She gave her brother a cuff under the chin that just crossed the borderline of playful.
“Sorry,” he said. “That was quite out of line.” He included both Clara and then Suzanne in his apology, turning his head round so that he could look at her with his one good eye.
“Suzanne wants to know about us and Murdo,” Clara told him, her face so serious that Suzanne saw what she would be at fifty. “We said we would talk when you came.”
“Ugh!” he said and collapsed on the floor in a sorrowful heap.
“Oh, get up, Callum. You know we have to do this. It would be unthinkable to leave her to his devices.”
He stood up, sent Suzanne a lugubrious look, and nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “The thing is you see,” he spoke now to Suzanne, “I hate him so that it is intensely painful for me to speak about him at all.” H
e put his index finger to his temple and twisted it as if he were inserting a long spiralling screw.
“It’s true,” Clara said. “Callum has just cause.” It unsettled Suzanne to see the twins’ faces turned pinched and white about the eyes and nostrils. This cannot possibly be an act, she thought. Then again, dissembling was Clara’s craft, and Callum had feigned madness well enough.
Callum made a deep bow. “I am,” he said, “the Pater Hater.”
Clara merely looked at him; then hugged herself as if a shadow passed over the sun and she found the day quite spoiled.
“It means a sacrifice,” she said quietly, looking at Suzanne.
“Yes,” Suzanne responded. “I understand.” Certainly she was beginning to accept completely that their loathing of Murdo was unshiftable. Whatever came to pass, there would be nothing she could do toward reconciling the children with the father.
She watched Clara and Callum amble away together through the trees. Abruptly, the girl bumped her brother with her hip. Then they were off and racing down a row of stiffly planted conifers. The sun was high. The trees’ shadows struck the path like a line of individual spears. So that it seemed to Suzanne they ran a gauntlet of hurtful points.
Pater Hater, he had said. So that was the P. H. carved so often and with such force into the oak of the bathroom cabinet. Just like Clara minutes before, Suzanne felt suddenly extremely chilled. She wrapped her arms about herself, like an imaginary breastplate, and began walking to the house, following – but much more slowly – the same shadowy path as the twins.
Jeremy, Clara, and Suzanne sat at one end of the long dining room table, Jeremy at the head, the women on either side. Callum had not yet appeared.
Suzanne faced the wall-wide claret velvet curtain, with its heavy sculpted folds. Like a cloak hiding an obscene secret, she thought, half imagining some slight stirring in its stolid drapery.
As she stared, a ghostly face emerged from the curtain’s central part. A young man’s face, pale and finely shaped, softly gleaming in the gloom. Suzanne went cold but did not make a sound. Which was just as well. For when Callum stepped forth, washed and wearing a clean dark blue shirt and jeans, his brother and sister simply nodded, as though they had all along known he was standing behind the curtain. Another of their self-indulgent family games? They hovered just this side of being disgustingly precious, she reflected angrily. Yet she registered their cohesion, and sensed an invisible force she took to be love.
Callum sat down beside his twin, settling in the chair with an unstudied grace. Together, he and Clara looked like angels. Jeremy, of course, was God. She was the outrider, the visiting floating spirit.
Callum had thrown his head back and was running his fingers through the tight springs of his just shampooed hair. Now he was clean, Suzanne could see how exquisite he was. His apparent vulnerability frightened her. His fully exposed throat was so slender and white. Yet she doubted that this pose was premeditated. His gestures seemed far less calculated than Clara’s. Suzanne reassured herself that Callum’s intent was not to make her feel guilty. This was not the sacrificial lamb exposing its windpipe; only a young man, restless and perturbed.
“Shall we begin?” said Jeremy, rapping his knuckles on the table top.
Callum moaned.
“We’ll keep it brief, Callum, I promise. If at any point, this process becomes unbearable, we’ll simply stop. Right?”
Clara and Callum nodded in unison. Suzanne noted that Callum’s lips were pressed so tight they were virtually bloodless.
“And Suzanne,” Jeremy inclined his head toward her ever so slightly. “I would ask that you keep any questions until we three have finished what we feel we can tell you today. And correspondingly, that we have the right to question you about...”
“Why you did this very stupid thing,” Callum chimed in, his face lugubrious as a pantomime clown’s.
“Quite,” said Jeremy. “I think it best if we begin somewhere other than with the mothers. Suggestions? Boarding schools?”
Callum groaned. “Primes,” he said.
“All right, then,” said Jeremy, laying his hands on the table. “Primes, it is.”
It was Clara who noticed Suzanne’s perplexity. “Mathematical drills,” she clarified. “We all had to do them before breakfast, but Murdo always gave Callum the hardest questions.”
“A prime,” she added, “is a number that is only divisible by one and itself.”
Callum was sitting ramrod straight. His cheeks were flushed. His good eye rolled upward. He banged the table with his fist.
“Callum Napier,” he intoned. “Is one million, three thousand and thirty-four a prime? Fifteen seconds, boy.” His take on Murdo’s inflection struck Suzanne as uncomfortably accurate.
“No?” Callum continued in his father’s voice. “Dunce of a boy. To the study with you. Get in position.” Callum put his head in his hands. “Bastard,” Suzanne heard him murmur in his own voice. “Fucking bastard.” When he emerged from behind the barrier of his interlocked fingers, he looked ready to weep.
Jeremy and Clara exchanged a look of concern. Clara put her hand on Callum’s shoulder. Jeremy said quietly: “Callum, would you like a whisky? Clara, would you get the decanter and four glasses, please.”
Clara walked (no fairy-light skipping this time, Suzanne noted) to the liquor cabinet and fetched Murdo’s cut-glass decanter of single malt and the glasses. She poured them each a generous measure.
Suzanne did not usually drink alcohol until after sundown, but since she was the reason this ordeal was taking place, she thought it best to join in. Besides she might well need a good stiff shot in order to hear the children’s stories.
“Callum?” Clara was gently stroking the back of her brother’s neck.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m just not able at the moment.”
“Shall I tell her then?” Clara asked.
“Yes,” he said, but so softly the word seemed to Suzanne like a ghost of a breath.
Suzanne lifted the heavy glass to her lips and took a good gulp of whisky. She was terrified she was about to hear some horrendous story of sexual abuse. She realized Jeremy was watching her. He shook his head slightly. Suzanne thought he mouthed the words, “No not that.” This greatly relieved her. He is a wonder, she thought, marvelling at the swiftness of his understanding.
“Murdo used to beat Callum badly whenever he failed the primes test,” Clara began. “He had a switch that he used to beat him on his bare buttocks. Often until he bled. He made Callum dress up formally for these beatings. He had to wear his white shirt and tie and regulation trousers they gave him at boarding school. This only happened in the summer holidays,” she added. “The rest of the time we were all sent away to school.”
“Thank God for that,” Suzanne managed to say. She felt quite ill, and was further upset to see that both Callum and Clara were crying.
“Shall I take over for a bit, twins?” Jeremy asked. “Callum, would you like to go outside for a while?”
“I’m all right, Jeremy. Really. It’s only,” he said, looking at Suzanne, “that we try not to dredge it up.”
“I’m so terribly sorry,” said Suzanne, painfully aware how lame this sounded.
“You are not responsible for the fact that Murdo Napier is a monster,” Jeremy said. “We three sense you are a decent human being. Otherwise, we would not be telling you these things.”
“The problem is that the man simply lacks all natural affections. I have no interest,” he went on, “in analyzing why this is the case. He has done far too much damage for me to bother applying any disinterested compassion. As I think I told you, he was uxorious in a perverse manner. He hated me from birth, for the simple fact that I diverted Miranda’s attention from him. He solved that problem by making sure she saw as little of me as possible. Effectively, he deprived a new mother of her child for his own selfish purposes. The rationale was that her health was too delicate; that she did not have the strength to
breastfeed and nurture her own child.”
“He was obsessed with her body, as he was later with Kirstie’s, but for quite other reasons, as you will see later. As I think I told you in my outburst, for which I apologize, Miranda was a virgin when they married, and I believe he was pathologically fixated on her virginal appearance. It was not that childbirth ruined her figure. But she had put on a little weight, which according to my maternal grandmother and my nanny, she very much needed to do in any case. And naturally there would have been stretch marks.”
“But just as with Callum and the primes, Murdo had the highly irrational notion that only sheer perfection – as defined by him, of course – was good enough. He put Miranda on a strict diet that imperilled her physical health. She was already despondent at being separated from her baby. Murdo exacerbated matters by subjecting her to a ludicrous regime of weighings and measurements. She was so very young. I suppose she simply accepted his sick idea of what love was.”
“My God!” Suzanne exclaimed.
“What?” Jeremy’s eyes were inquisitorial, the eyes of the reporter trained to spy out information withheld.
“I found Miranda’s diary,” Suzanne confessed.
All three children regarded her very sharply indeed.
“And you thought what?” Jeremy challenged. “That these were the delusions of a deranged woman?”
“I...” She faltered.
“I understand,” he said. “That is what you wished to believe.”
She nodded. What she felt was a great sense of shame. For she realized that – yes, she had clung to the notion that the journal was indeed the ramblings of a woman ill and overwrought.
“Where exactly did you find this journal?” Jeremy asked.
“On the upper floor. In a drawer in an otherwise empty chest.”
The Applecross Spell Page 12