Ritual

by Jo Mazelis

  As I returned to the house, my mind seemed suddenly cleansed. At the door I turned my gaze upward to the great cloudless canopy of blackness and the eternal stars. Are they watching me, I wondered, all of my family and all of the saints? Then it came to me, the Mass sung at midnight, what Daddy called the Christmas Preface. The Latin words half-sung half-chanted by the priest, ‘Quia per incarnate verbi mysterium.’

  I held it in my mind, turning it over and round and through, repeating it in all its mystery and glory. These words should never escape again, I thought, I will store them in my heart and pump them round my body deep and red in my blood. This is my truth and my light.

  I saw that the Reverend had already gone up to bed; that in the dining room my chair had been righted and the soup bowls removed. He would dismiss me from his service in the morning I was sure. Perhaps from Christian charity he’d let me remain until after Christmas, but I would surely be cast out.

  ‘Quia per incarnate verbi mysterium.’

  In the kitchen on the table I found he’d left a folded sheet of paper propped against the bread crock. My name on it.

  Molly.

  My fingers trembled as I picked it up. This must be the letter of my dismissal and no wages left with it. Not a single farthing. Where would I go? What would I do? What dark crevice of sin would catch me? Should I starve or become a fallen woman?

  Verbi mysterium. Quia per incarnate.

  I opened the paper, my eyes already swimming with tears that blurred my vision and made spangles of each flame in the room. The paper was almost empty except at the centre inside the fold were three words.

  Don’t leave me.

  It was his handwriting yet still I feared some mischief for I had always thought of myself as invisible to the man.

  Don’t leave me. Verbi mysterium.

  I sat for a long time by the fire, barely moving, hardly thinking, yet at the same time it seemed that a swarm of bees danced and hummed in my head.

  At last the fire was reduced to a few embers and it was past midnight. I went up the stairs and into his room, not even changing into my nightgown first. I undressed taking off my brown wool frock, my flannel petticoat and vest and stays and camisole and stockings. Naked I was. As Eve had been. And innocent.

  I lifted the covers, glimpsing my Adam’s back, pale and naked, before I settled in beside him, pressing my flesh against his flesh and softly whispering, ‘Quia per incarnate verbi mysterium’, over and over until at last sleep overcame me.

  I awoke at first light to find that in the night he had turned towards me and his arm was thrown over me and his leg was hooked over my legs and his head was nestled in my bosom. I wriggled to free myself and he stirred in his sleep and muttered some words into the pillow that seemed familiar yet I could not quite decipher them.

  I tiptoed over to the chair and gathered up my clothes in a bundle then went to the door meaning to slip back to my own room to dress. The door creaked as I opened it but under that noise I swear I heard my name whispered in a quick and urgent appeal, ‘Molly!’

  I did not turn towards the sound afraid that I should see the old man’s eyes open and feasting upon me with lust as in the bible story of Susanna.

  Most of that day I kept to the kitchen and he to the library and in the evening I feigned sickness in order that I might avoid the Christmas service so I did not see what happened. Did not hear the poor man, in a wretched state of confusion, speak the Latin Mass. Had I been there all eyes might have turned to me accusingly, in older times his pious congregation might have burned me for a witch.

  I left the next day and made my way to Cardiff where I found work in a temperance hotel.

  Some time later I chanced to meet one of the miners from the village. His wife recognised me and was keen to talk.

  ‘Well now,’ she said. ‘You’ve heard the news?’

  ‘No,’ said I.

  ‘Old Thomas Beynon only lasted a week and a day after you left.’

  ‘Wasted away to nothing he did.’

  ‘Dew! He always was very thin though!’

  ‘Well, after the funny turn he’d had that Christmas…’

  They chattered on but I no longer listened to their words. Instead I heard a sound like the sea in a shell, a distant lonely murmuration, that must have been like the emptiness of his nightmares, for in his lonely sleep he had discovered that Hell was a cold and barren place to be cast out for eternity.

  WHOSE STORY IS THIS ANYWAY?

  That next day, a Saturday, a black-bordered envelope came in the post. Moth’s great aunt Audrey had died. The funeral was in Brighton the following Wednesday. Moth, whose real name was Mary Olivia Theresa Hazeldine, had spent many unhappy summers living with her aunt after her father had disappeared in 1947.

  She spent the afternoon shopping on Ealing Broadway for funeral wear. It was harder than one might have thought finding black clothes as that year navy was all the rage, but eventually she settled on a simple sheath dress in black with white polka dots, black court shoes and a single strand necklace of seed pearls. When she looked in the changing room mirror she saw someone who might have starred in a Hitchcock film (though she had never seen a Hitchcock film, only the photographs of scenes in the display case outside the cinema). To hide her dry (if not cold and triumphant) eyes she bought a pair of sunglasses with large squarish lenses and tortoiseshell rims and a black silk headscarf. Jackie O, she thought. Or maybe that infamous girl, Christine Keeler, ducking into court, the elements of disguise hiding not grief, but guilt.

  At Victoria, a guard, mistakenly and with the great courtesy of not inspecting her ticket, opened the door to the first-class carriage and she, not wishing to embarrass him, sat down and arranged herself elegantly in the window seat. The carriage was almost empty; dotted here and there were men in suits who tinkered with paperwork and whose cuffs were uniformly clean and crisp. She checked her watch and then retrieved a slip of paper from her handbag to review her booking at the Grand Hotel as well as the time and address of the funeral.

  The train began to move slowly, when it had picked up a little speed, the door to her carriage opened and on a faint air of London must, a man blew in and sat in a flurry of mackintosh and briefcase and newspaper in the seat opposite hers. He seemed not to have noticed that she was already occupying that table, or that the one across the aisle was empty. She saw him do a double take when he noticed her; his eyes, large with surprise, went from her to the other free seats, to the heap of possessions he’d thrown beside him. Then he shook his head, smiled to himself and looked directly at her.

  ‘Do you mind?’

  Moth took off her dark glasses. ‘No, of course not.’ She placed the glasses in their case, arranged the slip of paper so that it was perfectly aligned with the case.

  ‘That’s where I’m staying – The Grand,’ he said. Then, seeing her alarmed expression he added, ‘Sorry. That was rather impertinent, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Well…’ she said, uncertain whether to tick him off or accept the apology.

  ‘Business trip?’ he said, his eyes seeming to swarm from her face to her bosom to the slip of paper in front of her.

  Before he could read the details of the funeral, she folded the note and put it back in a zippered compartment in her bag.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We could share a taxi to the hotel,’ he said – very distinctly.

  But somehow she heard, We could share a room at the hotel.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I’ll pay, of course,’ he added in all innocence.

  ‘Good God,’ she thought. ‘He’s mistaken me for a prostitute!’ But, trying to make a joke of it, said, ‘Are you sure you can afford it?’

  He laughed and patted the back of her hand. A deal had been struck it seemed.

  Great Aunt Audrey used to say that Moth was sly, that she should be watched as she had ‘come-to-bed’ eyes.

  He picked up his newspaper. Moth, replacing her dark glasses as i
f the sun were catching her eyes, took a good hard look at him. She guessed him to be in his mid to late thirties, trim and healthy looking. He had a good head of dark blond hair, no grey that she could see, a longish face and square chin, a modest nose, small mouth, with pale, flesh-coloured lips. Eyebrows and lashes that were darker than his hair.

  As if he was suddenly aware of her gaze, he looked up and said brightly, ‘Have you been to The Royal Pavilion?’

  ‘Oh well, not since I was a child…’

  ‘Never been! Not in all the years I’ve been coming down – can you believe that?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘It’s not the sort of thing you do on your own is it? I mean there should be someone with you, or else you’d look like an odd fish.’

  His eyes were brown with flecks of gold, his teeth small, white and even.

  ‘What do you think? Want to save a chap from looking like an odd fish?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Oh, say you will. We’ll hop in a cab, drop our bags at the hotel, go straight to the Pavilion. Tell the boss the train was delayed, eh?’

  The ticket inspector arrived. Her travelling companion reached into his inside pocket and presented his ticket, then both men turned to her. She took out her purse and without hesitation handed over her second-class ticket.

  ‘You’re in the wrong carriage. Plenty of seats in second,’ the inspector said and indicated with a hand as stiff as a wooden signal the way out of the first-class compartment.

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake, man! We’ll be there in less than twenty minutes! You’re surely not going to insist the lady move seats now?’

  The guard muttered something that she did not hear as it seemed a shrill buzzing had filled her ears and her heart flapped like a fish on mud flats deep in the dark estuary of her chest.

  ‘Let me pay the difference. I’m sure this is just some mistake on the part of the booking office. How much do you want for the lady?’

  How much do you want for the lady? That was an odd way of putting it. Money passed between the two men, disappearing into the guard’s pocket with seamless speed. No new ticket was issued.

  Now she really had been bought, there was no getting away from it.

  There was the funeral to consider. Two o’clock on Bear Road. The train got in at twelve-forty; she had planned a taxi to the hotel to drop off her bag, then back in the same cab to the service.

  She had a picture of herself at the graveside, handfuls of earth in her palm, then the soft stammering sound as they were cast on the coffin. Her come-to-bed eyes as dry as old bread crust behind the black insect eyes of her sunglasses.

  Audrey had loved to talk about her own death, as if it were the fulcrum on which all good and evil depended. Moth grew very tired of the predictions flung at her by Audrey; ‘You’ll be sorry, you’ll rue the day. When I’m gone, then you’ll know!’

  She had been thinking of this and gazing with a frown out of the window when she glimpsed the green swathes of The Downs rolling lyrically by.

  ‘So … the Pavilion?’ the man said, smiling hopefully.

  ‘I can’t I’m afraid.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I have an appointment I can’t miss.’

  ‘Later this afternoon, then? Tomorrow?’

  ‘Hm … maybe.’

  ‘I see,’ he said and seemed to withdraw into himself. He fussed with his newspaper, then hid behind it and pretended to be engrossed in it for the rest of the journey.

  As they neared the station, he stood up and gathered his belongings and without another word made his way to the exit.

  Outside the station she saw several taxis pull away and by the time she reached the rank none were waiting.

  Convinced that she had done nothing to make him become so cold towards her she turned the whole episode over and over in her mind until she had rehashed it entirely from a romance into a melodrama so ensnaring and deceptive and deadly that she felt sure she was lucky to escape with her life. He was a killer, a sadistic rapist preying on the sort of woman who could afford a first-class ticket. He was in cahoots with the inspector. And as for that charade of him being the last to board the train and thus being so flustered he sat with her instead of at any of the other empty seats! Why, he’d probably been on the train long before her, sizing her up. All he had to do was open and close the door, then scurry distractedly up the aisle and throw himself down opposite.

  But, given such an elaborate plot, why had he given it up so abruptly? She looked around her, half expecting to see him waiting for her, watching.

  A cab drew up and the driver got out, popped the boot, came around the car and stooped to pick up her bag. Panicking she snatched it out of his reach.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said imperiously. ‘I’ll walk.’

  ‘Suit yer bleeding self, Mrs!’ he called after her and she felt his anger like so many poisoned darts in her back. It was not a very long walk to the Grand on the seafront and her bags were not heavy; the key reason for getting a cab was timing. It was the matter of not only getting to the hotel but getting to the funeral on time.

  Having marched at a furious pace down West Street, she now slowed, calculating not only the business of checking in, then finding another taxi, but also the fact of her whereabouts being known. He, or rather they – for he had his henchmen, would be waiting for her at the hotel, and despite the Grand’s gracious reputation, it was very possible that a bell boy or kitchen porter was also in on the scheme.

  Was this not what Audrey had always warned her about? ‘When I’m gone, then you’ll know!’ and with this thought an even more elaborate plot was revealed to her in all its nail-biting horror, its vengeful calculation. All of this was Audrey’s concoction; she had planned it from beyond the grave, hiring these men with her long-hoarded pounds, shillings and pence, in order to be proved unequivocally right with her bitter old predictions. To be certain to have the last word.

  Or Audrey was not dead at all. Not yet. She was hovering on the brink, as enlivened by this last act of cruelty as Lazarus by the presence of Christ. This was her sanatorium of good air, this her penicillin, her youth-giving sacred fire.

  No. Moth checked herself. It was too much. A flight of fancy as preposterous as those she’d had as a girl.

  Such as when she had seen the strange man staring in at her from the window in Audrey’s house and later smelled the smoke from his cigar drifting from Audrey’s bedroom. The guest room and Audrey’s bedroom were linked by a long balcony that overlooked the drive, the defunct fountain and the incorruptible lawns, and a man might easily have walked along it to spy on her.

  ‘This child’s imagination must be checked,’ Audrey had instructed her mother sternly the next day. She had then gone on to offer such a terrible and detailed account of her mother’s shortcomings as a parent that both Moth and her mother and the lady’s companion whom Audrey had hired that year, a beautiful young TB sufferer called Helen, were all moved to crescendos of weeping.

  Moth had been drawn to Helen – even her name carried the freight of tragedy – she was Helen Keller the blind, deaf and dumb girl, and Helen of Troy and Helen Burns, Jane Eyre’s dearest friend who had died in her arms. Only once had Moth had the opportunity to be alone with Helen and that had been short-lived. She had wandered into the walled kitchen garden behind the house and found Helen collecting herbs for a tisane. Shyly, Moth had crept closer and closer and was rewarded with a friendly smile.

  ‘Smell this,’ said Helen and she rubbed a leaf between her fingers then offered it to Moth.

  ‘Lemons!’

  ‘That’s lemon verbena. Here, what’s this?’

  ‘Lavender!’

  ‘Good and this one?’

  She let Moth cut some of the stems and showed her how she laid them neatly in rows at the bottom of the wooden trug. She explained their use in medicine and their symbolism; twelve sage leaves picked at midnight for divination, bay leaves to ward off evil, coriande
r as a love potion.

  If a child is capable of falling deeply and everlastingly in love, then Moth fell into that beautiful condition at that moment. Add the drone of bees, the great aching canopy of intensely blue sky above, the pungent perfume of the flowers, the sun warming her pale and winter-starved skin, and Helen’s kind but tragic beauty, and all becomes clear.

  The sound of a cane rapped on a metal gate caused both of them to jump. Moth turned to see Audrey, her mouth set in a hard fleshless line, her eyes small and black and bright, her chin raised. Helen quickly rose to her feet and gathered up the scissors and the trug with hands that were visibly trembling. Audrey slowly raised the cane as if it were a divining rod set to sniff out evil then started toward them. Helen hurried off, ducking as she passed Audrey as though she expected the cane to fall upon her shoulders. Moth stood where she was, rigid with fear. She was seven years old.

  She never dared approach Helen again, but looked at her often with baleful helpless eyes. Helen avoided the child’s gaze, her touch, the very breath from her lips – for she had been warned. Not long after that Helen was gone and never spoken of by anyone in the house again.

  ‘Then you’ll know!’

  Moth seemed to hear the old woman’s voice and sensed the whip-like shadow of her cane flickering impatiently like a branch against the moon. ‘That child lets her imagination run riot. She is in mortal danger; the devil will find use for her and make no mistake!’

  The song of Audrey’s words was constant, a noise that went on echoing and ringing in the ears and mind long after the tongue had ceased its flapping.