A Night With No Stars

by Sally Spedding

  Meanwhile, Iwan George at Gellionnen had found Richard Jones’s letters and poetry to his daughter. Some items even arriving after her death. Mark Jones’s cleaned-up hunting knife and all his other morbid memorabilia had been unearthed in the Hall’s cellar wall. Ten stones up, fifty across, just as his brother had said. But he’d not had time to be so careful at Maesybont, and his prints found in the kitchen of ‘Simnai’ Williams’s bungalow matched those on the weapon used to silence the troublesome little man for ever. The bread knife abandoned in Wern Goch’s field.

  DNA tests carried out on the strip of blue shirt found in the plasters box, stored in the wall, proved that the saturated fibres contained blood from two wounds, His and Hers, fourteen years old. Cold bad blood. The start of a life in hell.

  ‘So, is it Mauritius or Goa for us, then?’ Anna grinned, pouring herself a glass. ‘Nick says he’ll be glad to get rid of me for a week and, apart from my Brazilian which is itching like crazy, I’ve got a bikini waiting to be worn.’

  ‘I’ll have to think about it, okay?’

  An easy silence fell between them and Anna’s gaze fell on the cat sprawled out asleep on the shelf above the Aga. Lucy gladly would have joined it as she’d lain awake most nights since that terrible Wednesday afternoon, re-living Hector’s last moments and seeing those two drowning heads. Images she knew would blight her for the rest of her life.

  Her mother had rung immediately the news had broken in the press and on TV and radio, and had insisted upon coming down to Wales, but Lucy had said no. She’d be back in Manchester with her dad’s money and job-hunting soon enough. The Ravenstone legacy would be her secret for the time being because, right now, like that Chandos Hotel night in June it represented a certain kind of death.

  ‘From what I’ve heard and read, I don’t think he was entirely mad, you know,’ Anna rolled up three linen napkins and slotted them into matching earthenware rings.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Richard?’

  And Paul . . .

  How could she ever tell Anna what she’d once felt for him? How he’d seemed the answer to her every longing? And as she watched the tops of the trees beyond the window sway their heavy green crowns against the sky, she felt nothing but hatred for the beautiful, wilful Sonia Jones and the terrible wreckage she’d left behind. She’d loved one son too much. The other not enough.

  Families . . .

  ‘I actually feel sorry for the guy, do you know that?’ Anna went on. ‘Seems like he’d had a bum time, living with people he hated in the back of beyond. He hated his father too, for making him stay silent. My God, can you imagine that?’

  ‘I can. Yes.’ She set down her glass and went over to the Belfast sink where she stuck her head under the cold tap for a drink. She then wiped her mouth with the nearby roller towel, aware of Anna looking at her as if she too might have caught some of the madness.

  ‘So he never tried a Benn on you, then?’ she ventured.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Two weeks ago you’d have laughed at that.’

  But two weeks ago was another world. Besides, hearing that man’s name again, even though he was now dead, was bad enough, and the word rape too would probably be off-limits for ever.’ I wonder if she killed him,’ Anna mused as she tore open a pack of bread rolls and emptied them into a rustic woven bowl. ‘Forensics are saying it’s arson. That’s the latest, anyway.’

  Lucy watched as another string of horses came and went, this time leaving behind a cloud of brown dust.

  Dust and ashes . . .

  She’d not had a moment to follow the news of the fire even if she’d wanted to. But just then, in her mind’s eye came that small pale face which had on those two occasions at the Chandos and at Hellebore, stared so hard at her. Jealousy wasn’t the right word. More a longing. Poor Elizabeth Benn . . .

  ‘So, what did he do?’

  The question made her jump. Her wine nearly spilt from the glass.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Paul, of course.’

  ‘Just a kiss, that’s all.’

  Just a kiss . . .

  ‘And what about Mark? I got the message you fancied him a bit too.’

  ‘I did, at first, till I twigged he was covering something up. I tell you, Anna, he had these amazing eyes. They were, I don’t know,’ she hesitated. ‘Kind of like the night. Like the inside of that horrible cauldron.’

  She put down her glass and withdrew a carefully folded piece of paper from her bag. ‘This was the first poem he wrote for me. The second got trampled on by the police at the end, and I never found it. Please don’t look at me while I read,’ she added, because already her own eyes were beginning to sting.

  ‘OK.’

  And although she took a deep breath, her voice when it came, still trembled.

  ‘Lucy, bringer of Light to my dark world,

  As brightest star, you foil the deepest night,

  And keep the gloom from gathering in my mind,

  Like worms uncurling in the cold red earth.

  MJJ 23rd August 2001.’

  ‘Weird. Specially that last line. ‘Anna gave her another sideways glance as Lucy returned the poem to her bag, fighting back tears. Her fortnight in that bleak mystical universe, replaying yet again in her mind. How Richard and Mark had ended up hating her. How both he and Hector had lied to her from the start, and still she’d been sad enough to see the drunk as some kind of father figure. Gullible enough to tell him something she’d dared not even reveal to her own mother. ‘What a shitty old world we live in, eh?’ she added, wiping her wet eyes with her sleeve, knowing that perhaps this was the only truth he’d spoken.

  Anna refilled her glass and returned the bottle to the fridge. ‘The papers imply Richard had this hang-up about tarts. That he was wanted by the Oz police for a murder out there. They’ve just done an Inquest on the girl. Have you seen it?’ She went over to the pile of newspapers and magazines on the dresser.

  ‘Sorry, but I can’t look at any more.’

  ‘Don’t blame you.’ Anna stopped and patted her shoulder instead. ‘Still, you’ve got your name in lights. One way of doing it, I suppose.’

  ‘Great.’ Lucy looked up at her. ‘But don’t you ever go there, promise me?’

  ‘Where do you mean?’

  ‘Wales.’

  ‘What? Not any part of it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s a bit OTT, isn’t it?’ Anna checked her watch and tutted. She opened the oven door, eyed the pasta bake inside and closed it again. The appetising smell which emerged made Lucy realise she’d not eaten all day.

  ‘One of the Hellebore authors warned me it was a another world there. But she should really have said underworld. Land of the Dead. The damned . . . It’s nothing like what’s in that thing. Nothing at all. Take a look.’ She pointed to a carrier bag she’d left on one of the chairs.

  Anna wiped her hands on the roller towel and duly extracted Magical Tales from Magical Wales and as she turned it over, then examined the frontispiece, her eyes widened in surprise and pleasure.

  ‘My God. This is bizarre. It’s yours, yes?’

  ‘I’ve had it since I was so high. My bible.’

  Anna sat down to study the book more closely and without looking up asked,’ do you know the author?’

  ‘Not now. It’s so old.’

  ‘And the illustrator?’

  Lucy shook her head. It was odd seeing that rainbow cover in Anna’s hands. It looked nothing special now, just a drab little book. The kind you get in jumble sales, given away at the end.

  ‘They’re one and the same,’ Anna went on. ‘Sayer Price Childrens are bringing out a new version next year. It was originally published by Aderyn, a small outfit in Wales in 1943.’

  ‘A little black bird with its tail in the air?’ How could she ever have forgotten?

  ‘That’s right. Managed to keep going till they folded in the early fifties. Anyway, have you ever heard of Gritta Muller?’ she
asked.

  I G Muller . . .

  ‘Gritta, you said?’

  ‘Yes. She always used her middle name for her books.’

  ‘Of course . . .’ Now after all these years, she remembered. Now she knew.

  *

  Ten minutes later came the sound of car tyres on gravel. Both friends glanced out of the window but the drive was just out of sight for them to see who was arriving.

  ‘That’s Nick. About bloody time too.’ Anna went outside, clearly glad for this distraction after what she’d just listened to, while Lucy, still feeling chilled, watched the door into the hallway with a certain wariness. She’d never met the vet before now and, after her recent experience, strange men in any shape or form were going to be a problem for some time.

  Except that the person who entered, carrying a bunch of white roses, was no stranger. He smiled and came over, and as he did so, the knot of pain inside her unravelled to be replaced by a surge of happiness. He looked the same, even smelt the same, as if time had stood still since their last meeting.

  ‘Your fridge magnet man,’ Anna announced as Jon blushed and handed over the flowers.

  Lucy smiled her gratitude. And just then, to do that was enough.

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