Dark Dreams, Pale Horses

by Rio Youers

  I was at a loss for words, a rare occasion, although a multitude of questions, all of them curt, chased through my mind. I narrowed my eyes to indicate displeasure, and saw the little girl smile. She had a wonderful face, such pale skin, and her eyes were like tiny drops of the sky. There must have been something amusing about my expression, because she began to laugh. A delicious, contagious sound, and I felt the tight bud of my mouth relax into a long smile. She clapped her hands. I could see the boards of the dais through her legs.

  “You are an odd girl,” I said, and found myself laughing alongside her until there were precious tears in my eyes. Once the laughter had abated, I said, “Who are you? And how do you know my name?”

  “I am Lillian Bliss,” she replied, plucking at her over-skirt and inclining her head, as though to curtsy. “I am the only child of Lord William Charles Bliss, Second Earl of Waterend, who preceded your uncle as proprietor of Wickington, and spent many happy years here.”

  “The daughter of an Earl,” I interjected. “A Lady, then.”

  “Indeed,” she affirmed. “The Lady Bliss, if you will.”

  “And how do you know my name, Lady Bliss?” I enquired again.

  Her smile touched me inside, like the flicker of a lamp. “I would ask that you call me Lily,” said she. “And I know much about you, dearest Abigail; I have watched you since your arrival, and have hoped that you could see me. I so desperately want a friend. Wickington can be awfully lonely, you know.”

  “See you?” I said. “But of course I can see you.” I looked at her closely, aware that she was as transparent as a reflection upon glass. “You are an odd girl,” I said again. “Lady or not.”

  “Would you be my friend, Abigail?” she asked sweetly. “I should say that you need one, too.”

  “I have many friends,” I said.

  “At Wickington?”

  “I have not long been here,” I said. “But yes, Lily, I shall be your friend. We must be the same age, and I dare say you know this splendid house very well. I should like someone to show me its secrets.”

  “Of course.” She pushed off the dais and stood before me, the crinoline lifting her skirts outward. I wondered why she would wear such a beautiful dress, seemingly without occasion. I, too, had many wonderful garments, but they were saved for going to town, or to church, or if my parents were entertaining. Lily must have noted my curiosity, because she curtsied again, and then twirled.

  “Isn’t it the most delightful dress?” she said. I could see the lathes of the bay window though her body. Her skirts flowered. She twirled down the length of the hall, fairly dancing, fading in and out. For one long moment she disappeared completely, and all I could hear was her laughter. She reappeared at my side. Her cheeks were touched with tiny pink roses.

  “We’ll have such fun,” she said. “Oh, Abigail, I’m so delighted you’re here.”

  I nodded, once more at a loss for words. My inquisitive mind still simmered with questions, far too many to ask. Lily plucked up her skirts and started to twirl again. I smiled at her exuberance, and then followed.

  There are a great many things for which I am grateful. To have lived a long and rewarding life, above all. To have shared in the love of the most remarkable man. To have mothered three healthy, brilliant children, and to have watched them become strong individuals, but with those particular likenesses that are unique to family. Also, as I have mentioned, to have my memories. So many wonderful flowers.

  Apperception, and the capacity for lucid and educated thought, is doubtless the greatest blessing for one who enters the evening of life. I will sometimes sit in my room and hear the other residents talk to themselves or bemoan some imagined hardship. The function room is a place of varied sentiments, with plastic plants and a faux brick wall to affect rustic charm, and a wide window offering a view of the gardens. It is lovely to visit of a morning and watch the residents reading or playing some simple game. Conversely, there are moments that challenge the heart, watching these stricken, pitiful creatures sit alone, staring into some cruel space, and knowing that their minds are drifting in and out, like the ghost of Lillian Bliss as she twirled in the great hall.

  It is, then, most upsetting when incident contradicts greater knowledge. I will on occasion receive letters that, although addressed to me, are clearly intended for some other person. People who claim to be my friends, of whom I have no recollection. Acquaintances of my darling husband, obviously frauds, who suggest that they worked with him at such-and-such a factory, or would share a tipple with him at this-and-that social club. Upsetting, because my husband was one of the most renowned surgeons in the land, and most certainly not wont to ‘share a tipple’ at any social club. He was a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and would engage on a social basis with only his peers.

  Last week (I can’t remember the day; it’s the little things that slip one’s mind) I was visited by an attractive, middle-aged woman who claimed to be my daughter.

  “I do apologize,” I said, “if you think me rude, but I have no idea who you are.”

  She had a kindly face. The tip of her nose was slightly off-centre, but this was the only imperfection. Her eyes were large and, yes, the same light brown colour as mine. She had very straight teeth. Very white. She nodded, and then smiled, and then pointed to the flowers she had brought with her and placed in a vase.

  “Do you like them?” she asked. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

  Lilies and carnations. Yellow and white. Healing colours. “Yes. I like them very much. And thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Who are you exactly?”

  “I’m Lesley. Your daughter.”

  “Lesley? Where’s Mary?”

  “Mary?” She frowned. A furrow appeared between her eyebrows. Another similarity. My head started to ache and I instinctively reached to touch the wall.

  “This is all rather upsetting,” I said.

  “I know. It’s fine,” she said. She sat with her hands in her lap, smiling at me, her fingers twisting nervously. I looked around the room, feeling somewhat discomforted. I found it difficult to look at her safe, yet expectant, expression. It was easier to look away.

  “Everybody sends their love,” she remarked after a stretched and awkward silence. “James has been called up for National Service. Allie is in love…again. And wonderful news…Mark is going to university.”

  “Mark?” It was my turn to frown. I imagined the same vertical furrow appearing between my eyebrows.

  “Yes, Mum.” She looked at me deeply. “Your grandson.”

  I glanced at the flowers. A breeze from the open window made their petals whisper, like conspiring ladies. “Which university?”

  “Liverpool.”

  I bristled. “My husband went to Cambridge.”

  She pressed her lips together. Not quite a smile. “What was your husband’s name?”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but all at once my mind, usually so sharp, stopped short of providing the information. But oh, I was most disquieted; this strange lady coming to my room with her flowers and straight, white teeth, regaling news of no import. It would upset anyone. I shook my head and felt warm tears leak from the corners of my eyes, and wiped them away with my trembling hands.

  “I think you should leave,” I said.

  These episodes are infrequent, which is the best that can be said about them. The letters. The Visitors. Perhaps some curio that I will come across in one of my boxes, of which I have no memory, obviously left behind by another resident. Blessedly infrequent. Much of my day will be spent with the flowers of my life. Recalling my husband’s elevating touch. Feeling the small hand of my son or daughter curl softly into mine. Listening to the up-and-down song from the aviary at Wickington Manor.

  Three wonderful summers. Golden days. Endless, lazy hours watching the sun arc across the world. My friendship with Lillian Bliss was a thing to be cherished. How we laughed, the two of us, dashing through
the gardens as the fat bumblebees droned and the butterflies impressed flower-shapes against the sky. We were inseparable. She would sit beside me at meal times, making faces as I played with my food (much to my uncle’s annoyance), and, at bed time, she would lie close and hold my hand, reciting vows of togetherness until we fell asleep.

  She showed me Wickington’s secrets: trapdoors and hidden rooms, and a narrow walkway between the walls of my uncle’s drawing-room and library, where we would spy on him smoking his pipe, tapping the ashes onto the carpet and rubbing them in with his foot. Sometimes he would pick his nose or loose an explosive, trumpeting fart, at which point Lily and I would surrender to gales of laughter. My uncle would sit bolt-straight, startled, looking around for the source of the sound, and we would have to hurry away, scurrying between the walls like giggling, joyous mice.

  There were other places around the grounds, perhaps not secret, but special to us. A silver river where we would stand to our knees, feel the cool water rush around us, and try to catch the trout as they flickered upstream. A sullen old oak with a hollowed trunk, into which you could crawl and climb upward, and poke your face from a hole amongst the boughs, like an owl. A clearing in the woods we called Foxglove Fields—a spray of purple flowers that swished and nodded, looking both grand and sad, and of all the marvelous places Lily showed me, this was my favourite. It was where she would wait for me, at the beginning of each summer, looking so pretty amongst such vibrant colour. And it was where, when their petals matured and fell, I knew that our time together was coming to an end.

  “Oh, can you not come to Bledlow with me?” I would ask, fighting tears. Every time I would ask, and every time I would be fighting tears.

  “This is home, my dear Abigail,” she always replied.

  There was magic, too. I am certain of it. Lily knew things before they happened. She would tell me when to expect visitors, and how many. She told me that there would be a small fire in the kitchens, and that Cook would burn her hands quite badly. Sure enough, not two days later, it came to pass, exactly as she had said it would. And of course, she told me about my uncle’s illness, and that it would mean the end of our summers together.

  She could stop the rain. I saw her do it. She could move clouds and make the sun shine.

  One shimmering morning, walking hand in hand along the gravel paths of the parterre, we came upon a sparrow with a broken wing. The desperate creature hopped and fluttered. Its lame wing dragged along the ground. I gasped and scooped it into my open palms.

  “Oh dear,” I said. “This poor little bird has a broken wing. It will surely die without our help.”

  “Yes,” Lily said. She stroked the bird and it immediately stopped trembling. Its tiny black eyes blinked brightly. “Then we should heal him. Make him strong.”

  “Oh, Lily, can we?”

  Her beautiful smile assured me that we could.

  Following Lily’s instruction, I fashioned a strip of bandage from some soft, dusty fabric I found in one of our secret rooms. With it I bound the sparrow, securing the broken wing, and wrapping it beneath the healthy one. I ‘borrowed’ an old, empty hatbox from my deceased aunt (Lily smiled again, this time assuring me that she would not mind in the least), lined it with the same dusty fabric, and popped several small holes into the lid. We placed the sparrow inside and decided to take him out to the aviary, where he could at least chatter to the other birds whilst he was healing.

  For the next three days we delighted in digging up fresh worms and feeding them to our little friend. His beak would yawn wide and he would snap the worms down gratefully. We fed him water from leaves, curled into tiny troughs. His song became brighter, and at times Lily and I would sit on either side of the hatbox, listening to him talk to his friends.

  “What do you think he’s saying?” I asked Lily, for she seemed to know so much.

  “A bird will always communicate through song,” Lily explained. “They are such graceful creatures, and their lives are filled with melody. They sing at all times, rather like an opera. Isn’t that a wonderful way to live?”

  “It is,” I agreed, looking at the sparrow as he hopped and chirped. “So, then, what do you think he is singing?”

  “He is rejoicing,” Lily said. Her eyes reflected the aviary’s fantastic colours. “He is singing to his friends that he is feeling much better, and that he will be soon be ready to fly away.”

  “Really? Oh, but I shall miss him.”

  “All things fly away, Abigail.”

  “I’ll not fly away,” I said.

  But she nodded sadly. “You will,” she said.

  The very next morning, we took the sparrow from the hatbox, and I carefully unravelled the bandage. I was not at all surprised that there were tears in my eyes. The sparrow sat for a moment in my palm. His dark eyes blinked, and he was silent, despite the fact that the other birds of the aviary were joyously, loudly, heralding the occasion. Perhaps the sparrow thought that, with silence, he could mimic our comparatively dull method of communication.

  “Goodbye, little bird,” Lily whispered.

  “Yes…goodbye,” I echoed, and in a flicker he was gone. A healthy, winged heartbeat in the sky. The tears rushed down my cheeks, and I remember thinking that we would see him again, or at least that I hoped we would…chirruping on our window-ledge, or flying in circles around us as we played in the garden. But we never did.

  “Fly away,” Lily said, and then, to me, seeing my tears, “Think of him as a flower, dear Abigail, something strong and beautiful that you have planted within the garden of your life. We must every day endeavour to do such things, even if it seems a small thing—a kind word or gesture, perhaps. Every day, Abigail. Fill your garden with colour. Make it a grand and splendid thing, so that, in the end, you may turn and behold the most luxuriant meadow.”

  There was magic indeed. There were times when I would awake in the night and see Lily floating by the window, glimmering beautifully, like a flame. I think that, for all the rain she stopped, and all the clouds she moved, that is how I most fondly remember her.

  Her magic.

  A light in the darkness.

  It is called a care home, and there is care, I suppose. The staff will hold your elbow and walk you within the gardens. They will fluff your cushions. Talk with you. Recommend books. I look forward every Monday to having my hair washed and dried, and then we have lunch in the conservatory with rhubarb-whip for dessert (not a favourite amongst residents, which means I indulge in a second, and sometimes a third, helping). At four P.M. we gather around the transistor radio, tune to the Light Programme, and listen to Mrs. Dale’s Diary. Mondays are wonderful, but every day is pleasant. And that is really the best one can say about it. I am cared for, yes, but the people who care do it for money, not for love. The difference is staggering, and I believe even those with minds that are teetering on the edge feel it, too.

  There are occasional outings. A trip to the theatre, or, if weather permits, a train ride to the Dorset coast. Yellows sands and laughing children will always heighten one’s spirits. Seaside rock may be out of the question, but it is a rare pleasure to sit and listen to the waves, or watch the children cluster around the Punch and Judy tent (much like we cluster around the transistor radio) whilst plucking winkles from a cocktail stick.

  We will, very occasionally, be treated to individual trips. Nothing extravagant. An hour at the library, perhaps, or we’ll take some stale crusts to the park and feed the ducks. I am often content with that, but the last time (or maybe it was the time before?), I asked my care worker, a quite lovely young lady named Geraldine, or perhaps Jennifer, if she would take me to Wickington Manor.

  “I used to summer there,” I explained. “I should love to see it again.”

  “Do you know where it is?” she asked.

  “But of course.”

  We travelled in Geraldine’s (yes, I am certain that is her name, but if it isn’t, no matter) automobile. A disconcerting contraption, loud and
jarring, and I should like to have closed my eyes were I not offering direction. Geraldine said very little. She steered her precarious automobile through narrow, unlikely roadways, no wider than the bridleways we used to ride upon around Bledlow. The country hadn’t changed at all, and as we trundled into the Cotswolds I saw things that were at once familiar. The Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Northleach, where my uncle would take me to service every Sunday morning. The pale ruins of Hailes Abbey, jutting like old teeth from the ground. Cleeve Hill, rising powerfully above the green landscape, its summit masked in whorls of low cloud. Unfortunately, familiarity and I were soon to part ways. I had Geraldine slow her automobile as we neared Wickington’s handsome acreage, expecting to glimpse its west façade through the infantry of bordering trees.

  “Are we close?” asked Geraldine.

  “This is it,” I uttered, but something was awry. Where once I could see the house, now there was nothing. I looked desperately at Geraldine, who only frowned. We rounded a bend and emerged from the blanket of trees. A clear view of the grounds confirmed my fears. Wickington Manor—three floors of beatific Tudor craftsmanship—had been razed to the ground, and in its place stood unsightly ranks of terraced housing.

  I pressed a hand to my lips, but could not suppress the emotion. A powerful sob escaped me. “Oh,” I said, over and over. I gathered a handkerchief from my sleeve and dabbed at my tears.

  The front gates—red brick and baroque ironwork—were also gone. The entranceway, once lined with wild lavender, was now an ugly grey string of road. Geraldine turned the wheel and we juddered onto it, her automobile puffing and rattling. My poor heart dropped a little deeper with every second.

  “Which one?” Geraldine enquired as we approached the nearest terrace.

  I blinked. “I’m sorry?”

  She pointed at the houses, as though I had not seen them. “Which house did you used to spend your summers in?”