“Yes. She made a point of it when she talked to Uncle Adam. He called and said she wanted to see both of us if we could make it.”
We walked down a long corridor with wards on either side, looking for the correct room. An aroma, like that from our medical cabinet at home, wafted around. My right shoe squeaked each time I stepped on the rubberised floor. I stopped and looked in turn at the soles of both shoes. They appeared identical.
“Come on, Rhory, stop faffing around.”
When we went in I thought Dad had made a mistake. I couldn’t see Aunt Bridget. One woman sat up in bed watching the TV. She had on a bright pink top that clashed with her orange-coloured hair. One massive lady faced away from us. The third couldn’t have been much older than Juliette and had her eyes closed with her iPod earphones blotting out the world. I looked more carefully at number four by the window. She looked back, her face gaunt, lined, and framed with grey hair that spilled all over her pillow. Above her, a bag of clear fluid connected to her thin arm through a plastic tube. She nodded.
“Hello, Bridget,” said my dad. “We’ve brought the statutory grapes. I hope you like them.”
“Well if I don’t, Angus, the nurses certainly do.” She smiled slightly. “And –” she pointed towards the teenage girl, with her head nodding in time to a silent beat – “I’ve friends here who eat all my extras.” She caught my gaze. “Hello, Rhory. Good of you to come. I know visiting poorly relatives isn’t the nicest way to spend your Sunday.”
“Hello, Auntie,” I mumbled, unsure how to talk to a sick great aunt. “How are you?” My gut tensed at the stupidity of my question.
Aunt Bridget smiled. “Oh you know, comme ci, comme ça. Now why don’t you sit at the end of the bed … and Angus –” she extended a thin finger – “you take this chair after pulling the curtains around us a bit. Let’s pretend at least that we have privacy.”
Auntie and Dad caught up on family news. I stood up and peered through the metal frame window. Opposite, the white building needed a lick of paint over its rusty stains. In the quadrangle below people walked around in dressing gowns. Some smoked.
I reflected on what had happened the day before, and who it was who’d sealed off the old temple. I felt a complete prune having sworn I could show Juliette where the temple was and failing so miserably.
“You’re in a dream, Rhory.”
“Oh, sorry, Auntie.” I looked around and couldn’t see my dad anywhere.
“I sent your dad on an errand. Ciggies and another Sunday paper. I’ve already read this one from page one to page one hundred.” She indicated the mangled heap of newspaper on the floor by the wall. She dropped her voice. “Rhory, basically I needed some time alone with you. Come, dear, sit down.”
I nodded, not knowing quite what to say.
“Move a bit closer so I don’t have to shout,” she said, and I eased my way further up the bed. “That’s better.”
She leaned forward, grimacing and reaching out to touch my cheek with her finger. Her pale eyes held mine. “You’re a good boy. A brave boy. I know much of what you’ve done, or rather …” She cleared her throat, and taking a beige plastic beaker from the side cabinet, took a sip of water. “Or rather, I’ve seen what you’ve done.”
She must have clocked my puzzlement.
“Rhory, as I approach my own death things that were once hidden have become clear.” She smiled once more and nodded a few times. “You, more than most, will know that death is largely illusory. And you, now, must know that time operates quite differently from the way most people believe.” She coughed and her eyes watered. I passed her the cup of water. “In my own way I’ve been able to follow parts of your adventure. Sometimes I’ve had vivid dreams and sometimes I’ve been on great voyages myself. My death, which is coming quite soon now, is only another part of the journey.”
A sob rose up from nowhere and my eyes filled with tears.
“Now, Rhory, we don’t have time for sentimentality. Listen carefully. You will go to my house and collect your ancestor’s journal, the one I told you about. It will be okay for you to read it, now that you are underway, as it were. You may have to get parts translated because I guess you don’t speak ancient Greek, even though you’ve been to ancient Greece.” She chuckled at her own joke and started to cough again. I poured more water from a jug by the bed into the beaker. Dad’s car keys lay on the bedside cabinet.
“Thanks, dear. Now, where was I? Oh yes. Look, we need to cut a few corners. I don’t know if this will work but we’ll see. Before your dad comes back.”
She handed me the plastic cup and I placed it by the jug.
“Here, hold both of my hands,” said my aunt.
She moved her left arm with care, holding the drip tube with her right hand to prevent it snagging on anything. She stretched out both her thin hands, with their veins and brown splodges. I held them in mine and felt the bones under the paper-thin skin.
“Close your eyes, Rhory, dear.”
At first nothing happened at all. The faint noise from the iPod continued and a murmuring that might have been the TV on an imperfect mute. Outside a nurse called to a colleague. When the silence descended it fell like a thick soft blanket. I floated in a dark space, full of light that I couldn’t see. I moved forward as though someone pulled my arms.
A fragrance, like one of Natasha’s joss sticks, filled the air. Warm hands now held mine. The darkness shifted, and I looked into the clear blue eyes of a dark-haired woman. She sat in a large wooden chair and I stood just in front. Her blue cloak carried the embroidered device of a grey feather on her shoulder. Katesch: the Priestess of the Feather. I’d met her before when I’d slipped into Egypt of so long ago.
‘Welcome back, Red King.’ She smiled more with her eyes than her mouth. ‘You’ve done well, but your initiation has only just started. Your faith will be tested. Remain resolute Rhor-Rhee. We all have to walk the Path alone. Such is the way of Thoth, which we have chosen.’
I nodded. I’d no idea what she meant.
‘You will come to know what these words mean. Ponder them deeply.’
I’d forgotten that Katesch didn’t speak with her lips but with her mind; I could hear her thoughts and she could hear mine.
‘Listen well.’ Her eyes became a more intense blue and her hands quivered in mine. ‘You must go both North and South. Find the Fire before you find the Ice. Trust the drum, it knows the Dance of Time. You are the Dance and the Dancer.’
She watched me for an age and then drew a breath. The image shattered like a dropped mirror, and I opened my eyes to find Aunt Bridget coughing and struggling to breathe.
I passed the cup to her but her hands were shaking so much she spilled most of the water on the bedspread. I wondered if I should call a nurse and started to get up. She caught my hand and shook her head. I poured more water and held the thin plastic cup to her lips. She managed a sip and nodded, once more bringing her breath under control.
“There’s another thing, Rhory, one more message. I could hear it but it wasn’t spoken. The priestess wanted to tell you to avoid the copper mirror. It holds great danger for you.”
“I couldn’t get an Observer,” said Dad, appearing between the curtains. “They’d sold out, so I picked up The Independent. I hope that’s okay.” He handed them over, showing Aunt Bridget the cigarettes and matches hidden in one of the colour supplements.
She nodded and croaked a “Thank you, dear,” and winked. “Now you’d better go. It’s a long drive back to Hammerford and I expect Rhory has school tomorrow.”
After the goodbyes, and another welling up of tears, I squeaked my way back down the long hospital corridor with Dad. When we reached the lift he patted his pockets and said, “Bother.” I told him I’d seen his keys on the bedside table.
“You stay here, Rhory. Your shoe’s breaking the sound barrier. I won’t be a sec.”
The Boy in Quickly Lane
We turned off the motorway at the sign for Ch
orley Wood, swapping six lanes of M25 madness for the tiny tree-lined lanes running through farmland. Dad had been quiet for most of the journey. He’d talked a bit about Aunt Bridget but otherwise had been deep in thought. A couple of times he’d sniffed and sighed.
The vision with the priestess Katesch filled my mind. Go both North and South. Find the Fire before you find the Ice. Her words reverberated, although I’d no idea what to make of them.
“She’s a grand old bird, is Bridget,” Dad said as we turned right into Quickly Lane. “She wants us to check that Jiminy is being fed okay, and to see to any mail that may have arrived.” Dad tapped the driving wheel. “You know, there’s something she wanted me to tell you.” He flashed me a smile. “A senior moment I’m afraid, son … comes to us all. But it will pop back into my mind, I’m sure.”
Cars lined both sides of the road. Music blared nearby – the thump, thump of the bass rising above the noise of our engine. Dad drew up in the road a little way past Bridget’s house. “You go in and look for Jiminy. Leave the door on the latch and I’ll follow you when I’ve found a place to park. Seems someone’s having a big party. I’ll only be a few minutes. Hurry now, we don’t want to be back too late for Mum.”
I walked up the road and found the right number. I hovered by the garden gate, appreciating the music. It sounded African, perhaps West African. I love the music from that part of the world, especially the rhythms of the drums. I couldn’t tell if the music was live, but I jiggled my fingers in time to the rippling beats. I can always remember beats once I’ve heard them.
Bridget’s front garden, just into March, had a lot of colour. A boy nestled between two bushes gave me a start. He’d a grey face, hair and arms, and held a basin full of water. I smiled at my jumpiness when I remembered the birds taking a bath in his basin in the summer.
The key turned and the front door glided open easier than ours did at home. I fixed the latch so Dad could slip in, and put the house keys on the hall table. The door to Auntie’s sitting room stood ajar, and I could see the Toby Jug on top of the piano. Beyond the piano, in the corner of the room, stood the cylindrical wooden drinks cabinet. Amazing what you can do with a commode. Bridget had shown me on my last visit where a secret drawer held our ancestor’s journal. I’d collect that later. She’d tucked the key to the small lock in the Toby Jug.
I walked past the stairs and down the dim passageway to the kitchen at the back of the house. I scanned the room for Jiminy, Auntie’s ginger and white longhaired cat. His food and water bowls both had food and water. He wasn’t going to starve.
Outside, in the back garden, the music pounded away. The leaden sky lent a dull greyness to everything. I wandered along the central path, between flowerbeds full of tall blooms, calling for Jiminy. The huge tree at the back part of the garden swayed in the wind; I’d always enjoyed climbing trees, and this great spruce or whatever it was gave a grand view over the adjoining gardens. Auntie had screwed a metal rod about half a metre up the main trunk. It meant I could hoist myself to the lowest branch without too much difficulty. I would climb up, see if I could spot the cat, and wait for Dad.
In the middle of the tree, storm damage had thinned the main limbs. I had to stretch to climb and trust my weight on some pencil-thin minor branches. I positioned myself near the top and waited, enjoying the dusty resin-like smell. I’d climbed quite a bit higher than the window of the main bedroom and could almost see right into the loft window set into the roof. Dad walked past that window, so he must have parked really quickly. I hollered to him.
The figure moved back. It wasn’t Dad at all. Someone else had entered the house: perhaps a burglar. The man approached the window, keeping to the side. He looked down into the garden and moments later, straight across at me. I’d seen him before. But where? He stepped back and vanished.
My heart pounded and I found it hard to breathe. I gripped a branch and reached into my inside pocket for my mobile. I struggled to switch it on, using just one hand. My fingers made sweaty marks on the screen. I looped my arm around the branch enabling me, just about, to use both hands on the phone. It slipped and fell. I kicked out with my foot and trapped the phone between my shoe and the trunk. I could feel it edging downwards. Freeing both hands I wobbled on the branch and squatted down, pinning the phone with my fingers. Bile stung my mouth as I punched 999.
“Hello,” said a calm female voice, “what service do you require?”
“Police, I need the police, there is—”
“Just a moment I’ll connect you.”
A click and a long pause with no stupid music, and then a man asked, “What’s your name and what address are you calling from?”
I gave both and explained that a burglar was actually in my aunt’s house, robbing it as I spoke and could he please send a policeman, or maybe two, as the man was big.
“Yes, sir, there is a squad car on its way now. Where exactly are you, sir?”
I repeated the address.
“Yes, sir, I understand that, but where are you in the house? Can you lock the door?”
“I’m up a tree, the big tree in the back garden.”
“This is not a joke is it, young man? There will be a lot of trouble for me and you if it’s a joke, but, frankly, more trouble for you as we have your mobile number on our screen.”
“No, it’s not a joke. I’m up a tree looking for my auntie’s cat. She’s in hospital and we, that’s my dad and me, we—”
“Okay, son, I believe you, no one could make all that up. You and your dad just remain calm and the police will be with you in a jiffy.”
At that point either he hung up or I lost the connection. The back door opened wider and the man stepped out. Only I recognised him now. I’d seen him when Juliette and I were examining the well in Hammerford Park. What on earth was he up to in Auntie’s house?
He wore dark jeans and a dark-green coat with military-style shoulder thingies. He had a beret on his head angled over his cropped hair. He strode up the garden path towards the tree. He didn’t look up at me, but fiddled with something dark. He stopped and his hands made a sliding motion. Oh Jeez, oh God, he’s got a gun…
The branches of the tree gave me cover, though probably not from a bullet. I sat on a stout limb and pressed myself against the trunk. The man moved forward, looking up through the foliage. My brown leather jacket matched the dark-brown of the bark, and within the canopy of the fir tree I sat in relative dimness. Perhaps he wouldn’t find me. In the distance I heard a police siren.
The man ducked under the lowest branches looking up, his face an indistinct blur. Then he fiddled with the gun as though screwing something onto it.
Up the Fir Tree
The music from the party changed and launched into a song I recognised. I pressed myself closer to the trunk, the rough bark biting into my face and sick fear radiating all through me. A branch cracked and the man below grunted. He was climbing.
Noise ripped through the upper branches and a cloud of tiny twigs and pine needles erupted and pattered down. Jeez-Louise, he’s shot at me! I threw my phone straight down and heard it ricochet off something and then a grunt. I peered over. The man rubbed his face, his gun with its over-long barrel waving all over the place. Bull’s eye!
He looked up, saw me looking down, saluted me with his gun barrel and offered a stiff grin. He’d climbed to where the branches thinned and he spread his legs between two insubstantial supports. His whole body swayed but his hand became steady. I watched mesmerised as the gun barrel became a single black dot.
The streak of white and ginger appearing from nowhere threw the man off his aim. He lost his footing as Jiminy, uttering a screeching yowl, used the man to descend the tree the easy way. The burglar fell through the lower branches and landed with an audible thump on the ground. The police siren joined the cat’s screeching as it drew up near the house.
The man searched all over for his gun. Found it. Pointed it up at me. Pointed it down and fiddled with it.
Blue flashing lights illumined the fascia boards of neighbours’ houses.
A voice spoke over an intercom. Without looking back, the gunman sprinted away from the tree straight for the fence at the end of the garden. I heard a splash as he tried, and failed, to vault the shallow fishpond. I pivoted right round and could see him astride the wooden fence, which bucked back and forth under his weight. Then he’d gone. I climbed down and emerged from the cover of the tree just as my dad came out into the garden.
“Rhory!” he shouted.
“Stand right there, sir, if you don’t mind,” said the policeman.
Dad swung round. “What’s happened, officer? Why are you here?”
“We’re the law, sir, and we were called out about an incident. Now just stand still, sir, and I won’t have to use this.” The copper held out a truncheon.
“This is my aunt’s house,” said Dad, his voice much higher and a bit more quivery than usual.
I ran up at that point. “That’s my dad,” I said to the copper.
A second, older policeman came out into the back garden.
“So, is the burglar still in the house?”
“What burglar?” said my dad.
“Didn’t you phone the police, sir?” asked the older of the two policemen.
“I did. I saw the man. He was up there.” I pointed above my head to the attic bedroom. “And I was up there.” I said, indicating the topmost part of the tree. It now reached sky high, disappearing into the murk of the overcast evening.
“Okay,” said the older policeman, “search the house.”
“No.” I said. “He’s gone now. It’s all right. He ran past and went over the back fence.”
“Did he harm you?” asked the younger man.
“No. No, not really.”
I could see no point saying he’d shot at me with a gun fitted with a silencer. They wouldn’t believe me. It would be like dealing with Juliette all over again.
Time Knot Page 2