Shadow Over Sea And Sky

by K H Middlemass

  “Excuse my mother,” she said, turning back to Abrahms. “She’s a little…overzealous.”

  She was surprised when Abrahms chuckled gently in response. She was sure he would be offended, but instead he was smiling warmly and shaking his head.

  “Your mother is a good woman,” he said. “But overzealous is an apt description.”

  “I’d better do what she wants or I’ll be in for it,” Emily sighed, “But I’ll come and see you soon, when all of this has calmed down.”

  “Before you go, Emily,” Abrahms placed a hand on her arm, anchoring her to the spot. “I have something for you, from Hugo.”

  Emily raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Isn’t this something for his solicitor to carry out?”

  “I know, but he was very emphatic about it. It was my last promise to him that you would get it and it’s a promise that I intend to keep.” Abrahms said, pulling something out of his pocket. Whatever it was, it was small and bunched up in his large fist. He gently took Emily’s wrist and placed the thing in her hand. “It was very important to him, and so were you.”

  Emily looked down to find a small, golden crucifix hanging from a chain that pooled in the curve of her palm. It was a small, simple enough thing, plain and sincere and very typical of Hugo, who did not believe in flaunting one’s beliefs. The thin metal was cool against her skin. She picked it up by the chain and held it up to her face, watching the crucifix swing gently back and forth in front of her. When it caught the light, it gleamed like a jewel; though unadorned and seemingly ordinary, it was clearly made from pure gold and must have cost a fortune. Emily lowered the chain and covered it over with her hands, wanting no one else to see it.

  “You know, Reverend, I’m not really a religious person,” Emily said, carefully, hoping she wouldn’t offend him. “Why would Hugo give this to me?”

  Abrahms smiled. It was the smile of a man who had heard Emily’s words many, many times before, the smile of a man fighting against the current.

  “Atheism may be all the rage these days,” he said, “but Hugo believed very strongly, especially in his last months on earth. He wanted it to protect you the way it protected him, he said. I think he was a little confused, certainly more than a little paranoid, but his heart was always in the right place.”

  Emily thought of Hugo again. She remembered watching him walking down the hill from the house every Sunday morning dressed in his finest suit, and felt a sharp stab of shame in her gut. He had kept her in his thoughts to the very last, and here she was questioning his gift to her like an ungrateful child. It was his final gesture of kindness, the last thing he would ever do for her. Later, she resolved, she would place the crucifix in her favourite jewellery box, the one lined with lilac silk, the faint scent of the forest still clinging to the tree it was carved from. It would join the charm bracelet she had been adding to since she was fifteen, the signet ring from her mother that was too large for her tapered fingers, and the first pair of earrings she bought after her parents finally allowed her to get her ears pierced. That jewellery box only housed the trinkets that meant something to her; it would be a better home for Hugo’s gift than around her neck. She tried to picture herself wearing it, to have the crucifix nestled in her collarbone, and knew it would be a lie. She couldn’t quite bring herself to do that, not even for Hugo.

  “Thank you, Reverend” she said, not realising that she was whispering.

  Abrahms gave her an understanding smile. “I’ll see you next week.”

  Their conversation over, Emily slipped the golden chain into her pocket, out of sight, and went to join her mother with a fixed smile on her face.

  ***

  The issue of what would happen to the house hung in the air for seemingly endless days, and the town was alive with gossip. It was finally revealed that the deed to Fairbanks Manor would be passed on to another, in accordance with Hugo’s will. The house, it seemed, would go to a man named Richard Volkov, an outsider that no one had heard of before. As is the nature of small towns such as this one, everyone was curious to know who this man was, and it wasn’t long before idle gossip was buzzing through the streets, circulating and changing with each whisper until there was no longer a distinction between fact and fiction.

  Then, one day, when people left their homes to go about their business, they were presented with the first signs of life. Heavy wooden boxes were stacked up against the manor door and piled up on the gravel driveway, strong-armed men taking more from the open truck so large it was creeping halfway down the hill, parked precariously on the loose stones. The day was dull; the sky dark with coming rain, typical enough in Caldmar Bay, but it didn’t stop a small, interested party from gathering at the bottom of the hill to watch. No one dared go up there, of course, but between themselves they could speculate to their hearts’ content and maybe, if they were lucky, finally catch sight of this Volkov person. They huddled together against the cold and watched the movers go back and forth, stacking box after box until the back of the truck was emptied. They sped off, disappearing as quickly as they had appeared.

  Emily, who had forced herself out into the wretched weather to get some new pencils, passed the base of the hill to see the group watching in grim silence as the truck slowly and cautiously crept down the drive, back onto the road and out of Caldmar, never to be seen again. The boxes were left outside beneath the metal-grey sky.

  “They’re going to get wet,” someone said disapprovingly.

  “He should’ve given them a key. Why didn’t he do that? It just seems daft.”

  They went on, and Emily looked up to the house. The boxes were of varying sizes, more than she could count on sight, probably containing priceless objects that she could only dream of. It struck her as peculiar that their owner would leave their personal belongings out in the open and unattended. True, Caldmar was not known for petty crime, or anything much at all, but it was unusual nonetheless. Where was the man to lay claim to them? Whoever he was, he didn’t seem in much of a rush to settle in.

  “You’re the Van Buren girl, aren’t you?” an older woman asked Emily, giving her an unfriendly poke in the arm to get her attention. Emily repressed a groan and gave a wordless nod in response, secretly bridling at being called ‘girl’ at her age.

  “Do you know what’s going on up there?”

  Since the funeral, Emily had spent most of her time shut up in her room, only venturing out for food and supplies. She had been working on a project in a bid to consume her time and mind, desperate to fool herself that she was anywhere else but here. She often threw herself into work when she was angry or unhappy; in fact, it had been a coping mechanism of hers since her teenage years. The object of her current obsessions was a large charcoal sketch of Hugo. She had been working late into the night when she was unable to sleep, drawing until her hands and face were streaked with the remnants of the sticks that she wore down into nubs.

  Wrapped up in her forced isolation she had barely spoken to her parents in days, and they had kept their distance from her, busy with their own lives. There had been a few mentions of Christopher overseeing the deed, some vague official matters discussed between her parents over dinner, but this wasn’t information she was privy to; she could tell by their hushed voices and the way they sat with their heads together. Their knowledge was closed off to her.

  “Well,” the woman said impatiently, “Do you?”

  Emily sighed. “No. I have absolutely no idea.”

  And then she left, turning her back on the manor.

  ***

  The next morning, a fog rolled in from the sea and covered the ground. The house cast a dark, heavy shadow over the town, a sinister silhouette that penetrated the thick, masking sea air. Everything was quiet, even the water was still that morning. The hour was early; no one had yet emerged from their homes, but if they had been inclined to cast their eyes over Fairbanks manor, they would see that the boxes were gone.

  2

  Emily took a hesita
nt sip of her coffee, only to find it still too hot. Back in her old place, she would have added a dash of tap water to cool it down, but her mother had refused to let her brew her own coffee since she had come back and Emily simply couldn’t face the fallout. Her mother was a very particular woman, a trait that Emily saw in herself more often than she would have liked, and she had learned long ago not to stoke those fires unless absolutely necessary. If Victoria Van Buren wanted her daughter to drink scalding coffee, then that was the way it would have to be for now. Emily set her cup back in its saucer and leant back in her chair, thinking. The sounds of the waves crashed up around her ears, lulling her a little in the early morning, and she gazed out of the conservatory window where a grey and uninspiring landscape presented itself to her. Clearly, not much had changed in her time away.

  She had not intended to return home, at least not permanently. At the age of twenty-five, she had imagined herself to be living in some big city by now, working tirelessly as an artist and attending parties every single night, the toast of the metropolitan scene and the woman that broke hearts and inspired sonnets wherever she went. Instead, here she was, with no real money of her own and forced back into the house of her mother and father, with only her easels and paints for company. Emily knew that her dreams and goals were empty and more than a little clichéd, but she still clung to them with some faint hope anyway. In the real world, living as an artist was fine if you didn’t much care for eating or people taking you seriously, but Emily did want to be taken seriously, and when you came from a family with some weight and authority as Emily had done, that was impossible. She could never be truly bohemian for the simple reason that she had come from old money and that her father was in government, and though her artists’ soul burned brighter than a star it was only visible to the naked eye.

  Instead of parties and likeminded people with whom she could while away the hours of her youth, she had been forced into taking two minimum-wage jobs that she hated, along with selling her paintings for insulting prices out on the street on the weekends to keep up with the rent. She lived in a shared house with some friends from college, a messy little artists’ commune that was overpriced and poorly cared for. On reflection, though she missed the diversity and excitement of the city, she didn’t miss that house share, not even a little bit. At Now she no longer possessed the carefree ‘anywhere I lay my hat’ attitude that filled so many students away from home for the first time. She had grown tired of the constant mess, the endless bickering and the permanently faulty appliances, not to mention sick of listening to the constant complaining and the occasional bouts of pretentiousness from her housemates, who seemed to be growing away from her as rapidly as she was growing away from them.

  Eventually, Emily came to see that she was not yet living the life of an adult, despite all her pretenses to the contrary. In that moment she admitted defeat, packed up her meagre possessions and booked a train ticket back to the seaside town she had fled seven years prior, head hung in shame all the while. Her mother and father were naturally thrilled to hear the news that the prodigal child was returning at last, so thrilled in fact that Emily couldn’t help but feel some suspicion over it as well as a smattering of resentment. All parents were different, she supposed, with some a little more understanding and progressive than others, and though hers had paid for her tuition and seen her through university so that she’d have no debts to worry about, she always felt that they were more than a little disappointed in her life choices. She knew for certain that her mother had had high aspirations for her, secretly hoping for another Van Buren Family Success Story like Emily’s older brother Miles, who worked in advertising in the States and was married to a former beauty queen and had three eerily beautiful children, and rarely bothered to visit even though money was hardly an issue for him. Though Emily had always done well in school, she knew that painting was the only thing that had ever truly called out to her, that she loved to create and always would. No other discipline had the same appeal to her. Science and mathematics left her cold, she didn’t care for the unfeeling practicality of it all, and she couldn’t really write beyond mere statements of fact and took the novels she read largely at face value. The poetry of her soul lay in her eyes and hands, it was all she had.

  That morning, she had read in the Caldmar Tribunal about the new owner of the Fairbanks manor, the man responsible for the frenzy of tongue wagging and muck spreading. It lay across the table in front of her, slightly crumpled and littered with the crumbs from her toast. Now that she could put a name to the face, the story had interested her. A man with enough money for a house as fine as that of the Fairbanks family must have a taste for the finer things in life, she reasoned, and that house was probably in sore need of some fresh decoration. She had been inside the house a few times growing up, usually for dinner with the Fairbanks family or the occasional fundraiser, and the decor was less than modern, but then stately homes were rarely at the cutting edge of interior design. This new owner, this Richard Volkov, was still relatively young, in his mid-thirties by the look of his photo, and Emily doubted that the huge oil paintings of landscapes and hunting parties would suit his tastes.

  She picked up the paper again, dusted off the crumbs and inspected his picture more closely. He was… an interesting looking man, not exactly attractive but possessing a certain something that drew the eye, enough to compel Emily to look him over a second time at least. His features were strong and striking, reminding Emily of the thick strokes she had used to paint faces during an experimental phase in college. His hair was black and pulled away from his face into a dignified ponytail, and his eyes were deep-set and sharp, their colour unclear from the small photograph, resting beneath a dark brow. He reminded Emily of the old aristocracies of history, a man born in the wrong time.

  The article had described him as an ‘entrepreneur,’ which was vague enough as to seem impressive, and quite the property mogul, hence his purchase of Fairbanks Manor. While Emily could understand the appeal of the house itself, with its history and heritage, she couldn’t understand what there was about this town that would keep him here. He must have known what was expected of him as the new proprietor, so why on earth would someone like him be so willing to feed money into a town he’d never been to and had no apparent connections with other than Hugo himself? Perhaps he was eccentric, but then he looked a little too young for eccentricity.

  Emily drained her coffee, which was now warm and infinitely more palatable, in one mouthful and bundled the paper under her arm. She took her cup into the kitchen, where she found her mother sitting on the counter by a cracked window, cigarette in hand. She was watching the plume of smoke curl up and out into the air outside, her eyes half-lidded and dreamy. Victoria had been in the process of breaking the habit for the last few years but never quite managed to stop entirely. Now, she could make a single cigarette last for hours if she wanted to, and she often did. Watching her now in her little reverie, Emily could see a once young and carefree spirit that she might have grown closer to. But she was a different woman now, one that Emily couldn’t fully understand. Victoria started a little when she saw her, as if she were embarrassed to be caught out, but quickly shrugged it off and gave her a motherly smile.

  “Good coffee, darling?” she asked, clipped vowels echoing around the cavernous kitchen. Emily smiled politely and went to the sink, where she rinsed the cup under the tap and left it in the basin. She wondered if her mother would comment, tell her off like she was a child again, but evidently Victoria’s mood was floating along with the smoke and she hadn’t seemed to notice. Seeing the advantage, Emily took the paper and laid it on the counter in front of Victoria’s folded legs, her fingers resting on Volkov’s photo.

  “I wanted to ask,” Emily said, “Have you met him yet?”

  Victoria put the cigarette to her lips but didn’t inhale, her mind focused elsewhere, and Emily wondered if her mother had even heard her speak. But then Victoria looked at the photo intentl
y for a moment, running one finger along the line of his jaw in an almost loving way.

  “Yes,” Victoria said, eventually. “I went with your father to witness the deed being passed over.”

  Normally her mother would have been overflowing with gossip, dying to dish the dirt on the mysterious stranger who had come to town, but no, she was uncharacteristically quiet. Looking at her more closely, Emily could see faint, shadowy circles that were just beginning to appear under her mother’s eyes. Her skin, normally smooth and unblemished, appeared dull and blotchy beneath the harsh kitchen lights. She looked tired and old, way beyond her years.

  “Did you find out how he knew Mr Fairbanks?”

  Victoria looked confused for a moment, as if struggling to put the name to the face. Victoria, who knew everyone in town and had known Hugo better than anyone, now looked as if she had never even heard his name before.

  “No,” she said, after a while. “The subject didn’t come up.”

  “He’s been up there for a week now,” Emily persisted. “I thought that you and dad would have been there on day one, bearing fruit baskets and other things he couldn’t possibly want.”

  “Oh, I’m sure we’ll be making a dinner date soon,” Victoria said, ignoring her daughter’s flippancy. She languorously took in a breath of smoke, which poured back out of her nostrils like dragon’s fire. “You know how your father likes to cultivate the very best connections.”

  Victoria was still looking at the photo, a little wrinkle forming on her brow. Emily leant against the counter and, with a flip of the hand, folded the paper over, obscuring Volkov’s face. “You’re not exactly opposed to cultivating connections yourself.”

  Victoria blinked a few times, like she was coming out of a deep sleep, and threw the stub of her cigarette out of the window with an elegant flick of the wrist. When she looked back at her daughter, it was with a smile that seemed more like her old self. “Darling, I cannot lie.”