by Maxine Barry
MOTH TO THE FLAME
MOTH TO THE FLAME
Maxine Barry
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available
This eBook edition published by AudioGO Ltd, Bath, 2012.
Published by arrangement with the author.
Epub ISBN 9781471307249
U.K. Hardcover ISBN 978 1 405 64134 0
U.K. Softcover ISBN 978 1 405 64135 7
Copyright © Maxine Barry 2001
Maxine Barry has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Jacket Illustration © iStockphoto.com
CHAPTER ONE
Paddington Station on a cold and draughty February morning was not, Davina Granger thought wryly, her favourite place in the whole wide world. As she made her way to the platform she wanted, she could feel many interested male eyes boring into her.
At thirty, she knew that her slender and extremely fit body still moved very well, though not provocatively. She’d never sashayed to attract a man in her life, and wasn’t about to start now. Her extremely short cut of spiky blonde hair drew all eyes to her delicate, elfin-shaped face, and she was well aware that men found her very full lips fascinating. Her huge green eyes even more so.
She pulled her heavy, green woollen coat tighter around her, shivering slightly, and tried not to remember that she’d been in Bali just a fortnight ago. She tried, even harder, not to dwell on where she was going now, and why.
The upper body muscles on her five-foot-seven-inch figure contracted fluidly as she hefted her heavy case up some stairs. She usually worked out with weights every morning, enjoyed swimming regularly, jogged whenever the weather permitted, and knew she’d never been fitter. She’d also just recently finished a year of self-defence classes with the judo-master husband of her best friend.
She walked to the electronic board, found the departure time for the train she wanted, and headed towards the ticket office.
Something, in the back of her mind, told her it would be much better to turn around and go home. Much safer. Much easier. But Davina Granger wasn’t always sensible. She knew that, and lived with it. She knew all about truth and consequences. Oh yes. She knew all about that.
She stood dutifully in line for the ticket counter, thinking about Bali, and all the other places she’d been as she wandered the world in search of inspiration. Any student of human nature would have picked her out of the crowd immediately. It was not her unusual looks or her air of aloofness that made her so different from all the rest, but a sad kind of aloneness that seemed to encompass her.
As she approached the arched window, the ticket seller looked up, his tired brown eyes widening slightly. The woman was stunning. Such big green eyes. Such a striking face. He didn’t usually like these close-cut spiky hairdos on women. He preferred his females with long, long hair that a man could run his fingers through. But, somehow, this woman was different.
‘A ticket to Oxford, please.’ Although the voice didn’t snap, wasn’t impatient or demanding, he found himself suddenly jumping to attention. Blushing. Feeling oddly guilty for staring at her. He lowered his eyes, fiddling with the machine at his elbow.
‘A return ticket?’
Davina felt her lips twist into a grim smile. Her large green eyes seemed to glow, just for a second. The ticket seller found his breath catching in his throat. For one instant there, he’d thought that she looked almost feral. Then Davina’s smile seemed to flicker out, like a candle being snuffed in a breeze.
‘No,’ she said, her voice a dull tone. ‘Just one way.’
For some reason, the ticket seller shivered. There was something ominous in the way she’d said that.
As she took the ticket, it felt oddly cold in her hand. She glanced down, a little surprised to see that her hand was shaking. She tried to stop a fine trembling from invading her body, but it was hard. For this really was strictly a one-way trip. In more ways than one.
She took a seat and waited for her train to be designated a platform number, taking calming breaths. She wanted nothing to distract her for the next few months. She had to get herself under control.
She supposed it would have been easier to take her car, a well-preserved, bottle-green E-type Jaguar. But she’d decided that, since she was going to Oxford, she might as well go the whole hog. She’d buy a bicycle when she got there, and cycle around the city instead. It was important that she fitted in. She had to project the right image.
Davina knew quite a lot about projecting images. In one way or another, she’d been doing it all her life.
When her train came, she noted the no-smoking carriages with approval and found an empty seat. She settled herself down, ignoring the man opposite, who kept flickering looks at her from behind the papers he was reading.
Davina watched the graffiti-bedaubed walls and depressing grey cityscape rush by, with eyes that took it all in and processed it, almost automatically, into words. Words were her lifeblood. Words were her best friends. And, sometimes, her worst enemy. Words, she was sometimes convinced, were the only thing she was good at.
Twenty minutes later, grazing horses and swan- and coot-filled rivers took over. For all her travels, there was still no place like England. No place like home.
Home. Davina’s lips twisted in a sudden, surprised grimace of pain. No. She would not think of home.
Once it had been a warm place, a hectic, unfashionably decorated house in Hastings. Home had meant her mother and David. Her mother, who’d always encouraged her in her ambition, and David, her much younger stepbrother, full of cheek, charm and mischief. Now home was no longer hectic. No longer warm. It was just a house where her mother grieved, and David’s ghost haunted every room.
She still felt guilty at leaving her mother behind, all alone. But she’d had no other choice. If she’d told her what she was planning, she’d only have tried to talk her out of it.
Davina saw the green fields blur into a velvet mist, and realised she was on the verge of crying. Again. Grimly she blinked. Focused. Deep-breathed. She itched to snatch up some paper and write a scathing, hot and bitter poem about repressed grief. But she didn’t, of course, and the world slowly righted itself.
Then, nearly an hour to the minute after leaving London, the train pulled into Oxford Station.
She was wearing a long lilac skirt, a cream camisole which hugged her gently-swelling breasts, topped with a loose linen overskirt in a darker shade of lilac. She was slender-waisted, but had a powerful elegance, as she lowered her case from the overhead rack, that caught her fellow passenger’s attention.
She glanced at the man staring at her, but the expression in her large green eyes was not what he was expecting. It was neither the pleased look of a woman who dressed to be admired, nor the scornful look of a man-hater. The woman looked at him . . . well, with a kind of blank indifference.
Davina slipped into her long, warm woollen coat, and left the train.
A nineteen-year-old student, who was just getting on the train as she was stepping off, suddenly did a comical double-take. The student, a woman with long black hair and china-blue eyes, hesitated visibly, one foot on the train, one foot on the platform. She was in her first year of a three-year BA course in English literature, and Davina’s challenging, clear-eyed, defiant face was familiar to anyone who read modern poetry.
For a moment, Alicia Norman wanted to forget about the train, and her weekend trip home. Instead, she wanted to rush after the greatest livin
g poet (in her opinion) in the country and . . . what? Alicia laughed at herself. Ask for her autograph, like some starstruck fan? She shook her head and stepped into the train, telling herself to act her age.
But as she took a seat, she craned her head to watch the striking blonde woman walk up the platform with a ground-covering ease that Alicia really envied. Like a fox, the woman looked as though she could lope along for miles without even thinking about it. Alicia herself was too short to be able to glide that smoothly.
Unaware of her silent fan club, Davina stood at the top of a short flight of steps, and looked around. The city heaved with traffic, and seemed, from this angle, like any other modern city, anywhere in the world. So much for dreaming spires, punts on the Isis, mellow stone colleges and scatty, absent-minded academics in black gowns and mortar boards, she thought with a self-mocking laugh.
She had never gone to university, had never wanted to. At sixteen she couldn’t wait to leave school, being too eager to taste real life and all it had to offer. Besides, why study what other people had written, when all she cared about was what she could write herself? Davina smiled at the gullible, naive, shallow, hungry and greedy little teenager she had once been. Well, she’d seen life all right. And learned all that it had to teach her.
She walked to the taxi rank, and shouted over the noisy rattle of the engine. ‘St Bede’s please.’ The taxi driver gave her a lifted hand to indicate he’d heard her, and pulled away. Davina looked around her with little interest. She was too nervous, thinking about what lay ahead of her, to pay much attention to her surroundings. What if it all went wrong? What if she couldn’t think of a way of seeing justice done? She shook her head. One thing at a time. She was tough, clever and resourceful. She would find a way.
She forced herself to relax, to study the famous city unfolding all around her. After all, she was going to have to live here for the next four months.
The cab pulled up at traffic lights, where the Randolph Hotel stood to her right, facing the Ashmolean Museum on her left.
Davina’s eyes glimmered as she looked at the pale, Gothic columns of the museum. Now that was more what she expected of Oxford. Class. Elegance. Old-World style. Across the road was the Martyrs’ Memorial, with its flock of appreciative pigeons, and beyond that, the pale facade of Balliol. And, suddenly, she felt the city begin to charm her.
Without warning, as the Carfax clock chimed midday, Davina realised that she wasn’t in a city that could be just any other old city in the world. She was in a city that could only be Oxford.
The taxi indicated left and turned up St Giles. In the autumn, she knew, it played host to a famous, centuries old, fair. She recognised the modest building that was St Cross, one of the smaller of Oxford’s thirty-plus individual colleges. They passed Browns, the famous restaurant, and on up the Woodstock Road. Trees grew everywhere. Nestled amongst shops and offices were glimpses of cloisters, crenellated walls, ancient mullioned windows. The very air seemed to breathe a sense of history. Her sensitive, writer’s soul felt a frisson of kinship. Here, famous figures throughout history had lived, studied, loved, died.
The cab slowed to a crawl. And there, sandwiched between Somerville College and the Old Radcliffe Hospital, was the ancient, arched, oak gateway to St Bede’s itself.
Davina got out and tipped the driver heavily. For a few long moments she stood on the pavement, looking at the huge double gates, and the smaller gate set within it that was open, and admitting a steady stream of visitors. So. This was it.
After weeks of wangling, planning, worming her way in, she had finally arrived. The lair of the enemy.
Davina picked up her case and stepped carefully inside, her chin held high, her lips set in a grim determined line. Immediately to her left was a huge arched stained glass window, and a building that was so ecclesiastical it could only be the College Chapel. To her right was a much smaller, modern building, the porter’s lodge. She stepped inside, smiled, and asked if she could leave her suitcase there for an hour. She was cheerfully informed that she could. She left hastily, aware that the receptionist had recognised her name and had been on the verge of offering a gushing speech of welcome.
Davina knew, of course, that she would receive the red carpet treatment the moment her presence was public knowledge, but she was not quite ready for that yet. She wanted to explore. Get her bearings. Gird her loins.
She walked into the first of the quads, and reached into her shoulder bag for the copy of the College Prospectus she’d sent away for. This glossy brochure, complete with artistic photographs and modem blurb, informed her that she was currently standing in St Agatha’s Quad.
She tried to recall who St Agatha was, and for what she’d been canonised, but without much success. She made a mental note to read up on her. Those ancient martyrs were usually fascinating people. Perhaps a poem about a modern-day version? Davina laughed at herself. Whatever else she was, no matter what was going on in her life at a given moment, she was always a poet. On the lookout for inspiration everywhere she went. Taking mental notes.
She was sure that on her deathbed she’d be composing a mourning poem for herself in her head. Telling herself firmly to stick to the matters in hand, she once more consulted the brochure. St Bede’s, she read, was named after The Venerable Bede, who’d been born in AD 673. He’d been a theological historian of wide acclaim, which accounted for the very large Theology and History departments at St Bede’s. Fortunately for her, the college also boasted one of the largest English Literature intakes of any Oxford College, as well as a famous Library.
Davina glanced around her, at mellow Cotswold stone residences, gardens frothing with colour even in this inhospitable month, and a large stone cross. A quick glance at her prospectus told her that the residence in front of her, its facade smothered with winter-flowering yellow jasmine, was a student residence called Webster. Named, so she was informed, after John Webster, the Elizabethan dramatist who’d written, amongst other things, The Duchess of Malfi. Of course, Davina already knew that. She’d read the play some years ago. When she’d grown up enough to realise that reading the greats and classics was hardly a betrayal of her principles, and might actually do her some good.
She walked slowly, reluctantly, forward and stood in front of the large stone cross. It was, of course, a war memorial. And on it, listed in sad, carved lines, were the names of St Bede’s fallen, young men who’d studied here in the halcyon days before the wars, and then lost their lives on battlefields in Flanders and Germany. Davina’s lips twisted as a great rush of bitterness and pity washed over her. Such a waste.
So much futility. If women ruled the world, such insanities would never happen . . . She moved quickly on, past a rather unattractive car park and towards a much more interesting and attractive feature—the college clock, set squarely in the middle of yet another quad—Wallace Quad this time—with four massive white dials facing north, south, east and west.
She checked her watch, saw that the clock was right on time and gave it a friendly pat of congratulation as she walked on past it.
Opposite her was an ancient stretch of drystone walling, and a very attractive arch, showing glimpses of green velvet lawns, ponds and more stone facades beyond it. Becket Arch, the very helpful prospectus informed her. And through it, the main college gardens, croquet lawn, and the other student residences of Wolsey and Walton. Once again, she recognised the names. Wolsey, named after the Cardinal who was Henry VIII’s ill-fated advisor. And Walton, named after Isaac, author of The Compleat Angler written in the seventeenth century.
But as she stepped through Becket Arch, Davina Granger was not thinking about that esteemed fellow wordsmith and fisherman. She was thinking only that, within those many rooms, he was working. Perhaps giving a tutorial to one of his students. Or perhaps working on his own, latest work.
Dr Gareth Lacey. The much-published Dr Gareth Lacey, one of St Bede’s three much-respected, lauded, and venerated English dons. Specialities:
Modern Poetry and the Romantics.
She forced her hands, which had clenched into fists by her sides, to relax, but she could still feel the imprint of her fingernails, cutting into her palms. She really must learn to control the rush of rage and hatred that washed over her whenever she so much as even thought of his name. She must force herself to keep a distance. Step back, think coldly, logically. Otherwise she would destroy herself.
And not Gareth Lacey.
She turned and made her way to the main entrance to St Bede’s famous library. She very much needed peace and quiet, a place to sit and think and recover.
The library was one of the oldest buildings in the College, and as she walked along the cold stone floors, worn down by a procession of Oxford students who’d studied in these hallowed, narrow rooms since before the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, she found herself trembling again. A fine shivering in her lithe, conditioned muscles. A weakness that had nothing to do with the physical, but everything to do with mental stress.
She was apt to be over emotional. She knew that. Her teachers had told her mother so, when she was only five and had reacted so badly to the death of her stepfather. As a poet, having a fine, sensitive nature was a huge asset. But it left her extremely vulnerable to the barbs of everyday living.
She pushed open a heavy door, and found herself looking down a long tunnel lined with books. Nothing but books as far as the eye could see. In bays, stretched out along the length of the building, were heavy wooden tables and comfortable, red velvet-backed chairs. Some were empty, others held students who glanced up from their reading and gazed at her with vague curiosity. Davina breathed deeply of the musty, dusty, wonderful atmosphere that only books could produce. The floorboards underneath were soft and spongy, as was the ancient, faded, red carpet. She felt the building welcome her, like an old friend.
She moved along the line of books—heading unerringly for the English Literature section. There, she found everything from Thackeray to Dylan Thomas, John Donne to Ted Hughes, Shakespeare’s complete works to Virginia Woolf. She slowly sat down at an empty table and took a long, slow, deep breath.