by Jane Palmer
CHAPTER 2
‘No, no, not there,’ Julia bullied the small Chinese twins as they insisted on sitting next to each other and not in their allocated places around the fairy ring. ‘If we go and leave gaps like that the giant can easily reach in and snatch one of us.’
Tom, most of his face covered by a battered old top hat, warned, ‘And he’s got claws like a crab which will bite you in half,’ thinking more of horror comics than fairies.
‘We eat crabs.’ Lin’s mind was more on his parents’ cooking than the game in hand.
‘I like your parents’ food,’ piped up the small voice of Vicky sitting opposite the twins. ‘We’re going to have sweet and sour pork on Friday with beanshoots and spring rolls and lotus root.’
‘We picked mushrooms here this morning,’ Kitty, Lin’s twin, told her. ‘There were at least fifteen around this ring.’
‘Really?’ Vicky was wide-eyed with amazement. ‘Did the fairies put them there?’
‘Oh no. This ring is made by mushrooms growing under the ground,’ said Kitty.
‘Oh I do hate clever kids,’ sneered Tom, who would rather it had been a magic barrier against the claw-fisted giant.
‘We usually have dried mushrooms, but I like fresh ones much better,’ Kitty added. ‘Fairies may live here too.’
‘If there are any giants about, we’ll be in trouble if they don’t,’ Julia reminded them with the authority of the eldest. ‘Mind you, it is a very big ring to try and surround, I suppose. Perhaps as long as we sit inside it they won’t bother us.’
‘I’ve never seen a fairy ring as big as this before.’ Vicky lay on her stomach and tried to unsuccessfully reach across it. ‘It’s really huge.’
‘I suppose there must be a fairy palace underneath it,’ pondered Tom, taking off his top hat to lie flat and put his ear to the ground. ‘It would only come up at night though. People would frighten them off.’
‘What about Yuri and his telescope?’ Kitty reminded him.
‘Oh, Yuri wouldn’t frighten anyone,’ Vicky told her. ‘The fairies probably like him.’
‘Why don’t you ask him if he’s seen any?’ Lin suggested.
‘I’ll do that when I go back,’ Julia said. ‘He called in to see Mum. I don’t think he sees fairies though. He’s always looking at the stars. He knows a lot about the stars and planets.’
‘Oh yeah?’ Tom still had his ear pressed to the soft grass.
‘Did you know that, apart from the big planets like Mars and Saturn, there are thousands and thousands of much smaller ones going round the sun as well?’ Julia told them.
‘Never,’ scoffed Tom.
‘Well, there are. There must be because Yuri told me, and he can see them. They are so tiny he has to make this complicated map of where they are, then make another several hours later to see if they‘ve moved. If they don’t move then they’re stars, if they do they’re small planets.’
‘Why?’ asked Lin in wide-eyed wonderment.
‘Why?’ echoed Julia. ‘I don’t know why, but he’s got piles and piles of books full of writing and sums which tells him where they are.’
Vicky giggled. ‘Why bother to look at something so difficult to find?’ She rolled over and pressed her ear to the ground as well.
‘He must be very clever,’ pondered Kitty, and her twin shook his head in agreement.
‘He must be,’ added Lin, ‘because he isn’t like other adults.’
They were suddenly silenced by Vicky’s shrill cry, ‘I can hear them! Listen, listen,’ and she pushed her ear closer to the ground.
‘So can I, so can I!’ whooped Tom, ignoring Julia’s disbelieving scowl.
Kitty and Lin immediately put their ears to the ground as well and laughed at the sound they fancied they heard beneath it.
‘Oh really.’ Julia sighed, sure they were only doing it to try and get her to join them.
Their fascination with the sound was too deep and sustained to be a practical joke. Cautiously, Julia bent down and listened.
There was something sinister down there, a low tuneful hum. Too old to believe it could have been fairies like the other four, Julia felt an odd tingling on her scalp.
The others remained in rapturous silence until it stopped as suddenly as it had started. Then they sprang up, joined hands, and danced in a circle around the mystified Julia and Tom’s top hat.
‘Oh, you are clumsy,’ scolded Diana as she mopped the tea from Yuri’s sweater. ‘I’ve only just scrubbed Julia’s experimental toffee off the kitchen floor. I don’t want another mess on it. Why can’t you hold the cup straight?’
‘I do. I just have trouble getting it to my mouth,’ protested Yuri. ‘My hand will shake so much lately.’
‘I’m not surprised. After the way I found you the other morning it’s a wonder that’s all that shakes.’
‘But I only drink the gin to stop my hand shaking.’ Yuri smiled so disarmingly, Diana almost believed him.
‘You shouldn’t touch that stuff at all. How on earth do you manage to hold your telescope still?’
‘Oh, I do not need to. The equatorial mounting makes it still or the motor will drive it.’
‘Oh ... Do you want another cup of tea?’
‘No thank you. I still have some left in this to spill.’
Diana poured herself another cup and stood pondering over the top of Yuri’s head, which was covered in crinkly grey curls that had somehow managed to grow outwards at different rates.
‘Yuri?’ she said eventually.
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve been having a little trouble lately.’
‘What sort of trouble?’
‘I hear a voice in my head.’
Yuri was silent for a moment. ‘That is very odd.’
‘Haven’t you ever heard voices in your head?’ she inquired hopefully.
‘Never,’ he assured her. ‘I talk to myself, but I never listen.’ Then he added thoughtfully, ‘You should not hear voices. You are healthy woman ... as far as woman your age can be healthy.’
‘Thank you,’ snarled Diana.
‘I meant... because...’ Yuri couldn’t think of the right words.
Diana finished them for him. ‘Because I am a menopausal female, hearing voices should be a natural pastime for me.’
‘I did not mean that.’
‘Then what?’
‘If you hear a voice, it is either because you are imagining it,’ he could tell by her expression that was dangerous territory, ‘or because there is someone talking to you.’
‘How?’
‘If there is someone talking to you from great distance away, that means you are either telepathic,’ Diana didn’t seem very enthusiastic about that either. Yuri was relieved because he wouldn’t have believed it, ‘or that they have transmitter, and you have receiver tuned in to their frequency.’
‘My head?’
‘If that is where you hear voice, where else?’ shrugged Yuri, not taking into account the reorganisation going on elsewhere in Diana’s body. ‘I would not say it is impossible, but telepathy is much more fashionable nowadays. Old-fashioned things like transmitters and receivers take the mystery out of unexplained messages.’
‘I can do without those sort of mysteries, thank you; I prefer a more conventional explanation.’
‘There is much money in being telepathic.’
‘If I had to choose a dishonest way to make money, I’d sooner see fairies. Even if they aren’t so fashionable.’
‘Unfortunately one cannot choose the way to go mad. It is something that suddenly thrusts itself upon you.’
‘You make that sound like the voice of experience. You can’t really make up your mind whether you’re crazy or not, can you?’
‘If I could choose,’ said Yuri intensely, ‘then I would choose to be crazy.’
For a moment, Diana began to have doubts about his derangement and, not wishing any of his fantasies to ever prove themselves facts, she ordered him, ‘Come into th
e garden and see the roses.’
Obediently, Yuri followed her through the French windows, quickly trying to swallow the rest of his tea and spilling it down his sweater. Diana didn’t comment as she saw him attempting to brush it off with his sleeve, merely signalled him to remove it altogether. He did so and revealed a striped sweater beneath it. Wondering whether his dress habits had been learnt in Siberia, she pegged the tea-soaked sweater to the washing-line, watched it hang limply for a few seconds, then took it down again.
‘I’ll have to wash it,’ she announced.
‘But I wash it last week. Why again?’
‘It annoys me.’ Her tone didn’t invite opposition. ‘I’m beginning to be annoyed by everything lately.’
‘Have you seen Dr Spalding?’ asked Yuri innocently.
Her glance could have stopped a charging rhino in its tracks. ‘I’ve seen Dr Spalding too often to do my temper or health any good.’
‘Oh,’ he mused. ‘He give me tranquillisers as well.’
‘What did you see him for?’
‘I was taken to him when I have accident.’
‘What accident?’
‘I stop some shot...’ he murmured.
‘You were shot!’ shrieked Diana. ‘How on earth did you manage to get shot?’
‘I think he aimed for crow, but that flew away,’ Yuri briefly explained, and made to escape to the other end of the garden.
‘Bert Wheeler,’ groaned Diana. ‘And what were you doing near those telescopes? Eva must have gone mad.’
‘She did not know. Bert said he was very sorry and we agree to say nothing. I was doing nothing with her stupid radio telescopes. What could I have been up to?’
‘Whatever it was, getting shot must have made a good second. So why did Spalding prescribe tranquillisers for gunshot wounds?’
‘It was just graze. I just take them to humour him. He is good man really.’
‘Just bloody incompetent. And I want you to promise me-’
Yuri raised his hands in surrender. ‘I promise never to go near Dr Eva Hopkirk’s precious toys again.’
‘Or Bert Wheeler,’ added Diana. ‘Why go there anyway?’
‘I like looking at those expensive toys. They remind me of...’ His words trailed off.
Diana could tell by the distant look in his eyes she that shouldn’t demand to know what he was thinking.
Yuri wandered to the bottom of the garden and watched the children in the meadow with their ears to the ground in the middle of the fairy ring. With his back to her, Diana wasn’t able to see the tense expression cross his usually relaxed features. He stood there for some minutes until the children sat up and the four youngest began to dance in a circle. By the time he turned away from the happy gathering, Diana was hanging his dripping sweater on the line.
‘That was quick,’ he commented.
‘I had some stuff in soak and used that water. I’m not sure it would stand up to a spinning with the rest, though the washing will have to go out before the others arrive,’ Diana told him.
‘Others?’
‘Irene, Flora, and … Daphne,’ announced Diana, blocking his way to the gate before he could bolt. ‘And there’s no need to go because of them.’
‘I have some calculations to do.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘That Mrs Daphne Trotter woman hates me,’ protested Yuri. ‘I know she doesn’t want to see me.’
‘Just because she shouts abuse at you about the state of your garden every time she rides past does not mean she hates you. It’s just that the English have firm ideas about keeping gardens tidy.’
‘And that horse kicks gate off hinge. It hates me as well. I always like horses, but this one hates me. They are both bullies.’
‘The woman’s a little eccentric, that’s all,’ Diana tried to pacify him.
‘The world was conquered by these harmless English eccentrics. The rest of the world and me do not think them harmless.’
‘Okay, I’ll make sure she doesn’t start on you. But I have to invite her if I invite Irene and Flora or they’ll think I’m snubbing her.’
‘Why not? It is good idea. I suppose I will have to tidy up for this Mrs Precious woman?’
‘Well, you do look a right little scruff,’ Diana reminded him.
Yuri was defiant. ‘I like being scruff. I will not tidy up for Mrs Daphne. You make me stay, I will stay like this.’
‘All right. It’s difficult to see what can be done about it now.’
‘You wash my best sweater so it is your fault.’
‘Well, can’t you just roll your sleeves up to hide the holes in the elbows?’
‘All right. But I will not comb my hair.’
‘I wouldn’t know the difference if you did,’ Diana muttered before walking into the kitchen to pull the clothes from the sink and throw them into the spin-drier. Yuri rolled up the sleeves of his sweater that had hidden the holes in the sleeves of his shirt. With much fiddling and adjusting, he managed to reach the happy balance where he was able to conceal both.
Ignoring the grimace that Diana made at his hardly improved appearance, he put the dirty cups into the sink she had just emptied. Knowing the expected guests would be treated to the best tea service, he put the teapot in as well and vigorously turned the tap on to flush the tealeaves away. Instead they were splashed all over the front of his striped sweater. After pondering on what he could be expected to do about that for a few seconds, he turned to see Diana rummaging about in the pedal bin for the Prozac prescription she had thrown away two days ago.
‘Damn!’ she snapped as she realised the dustman had it. ‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ Then, to make matters worse, the doorbell rang. ‘Don’t move,’ she ordered Yuri, and dashed to answer it.
Yuri could hear the fond greetings echo down the narrow hall and the boots of Mrs Daphne clip clopping after the others on the polished floorboards. In his mortal terror he fancied he could hear her spurs rattle and, not daring to look round to make sure she had gone into the living-room, was suddenly startled by her overbearing presence in the kitchen doorway.
Her tight lips uttered not a word as she viewed the tea-stained Yuri, washing half hauled from the sink and contents of the pedal bin scattered over the floor. The gleam of the hunter spying the fox crept into her cold eyes before Diana’s voice called from the other room.
‘In here Daphne, I haven’t finished tidying up out there yet.’
This made the cruel lips twist into a smile as she turned with a slap of the thigh and creak of boot leather to join the others. Yuri half expected a pack of hounds to come bounding up the hall after her. He nervously brushed the tealeaves from his sweater in readiness to make his escape through the front door should they not materialise.
Diana came shooting in before he had the chance. ‘I’ll make the tea, Yuri. You can keep the girls entertained. Take that sweater off, you’ve got a reasonably good shirt on underneath it.’ He obeyed and she saw the holes in the shirt, ‘Well, at least it’s clean.’
‘I am not going near that Mrs Daphne Trotter. I never realise how good she make the horse look till now.’
‘I’ll only be a couple of minutes,’ pleaded Diana. ‘They’ll troop out here if you don’t.’
With a grimace of disapproval and irritably plucking at the badly tied scarf round his neck, Yuri ambled into the living room.
Irene immediately greeted him with, ‘Why hello Yuri, I haven’t seen you for ages.’
‘You are all right aren’t you?’ twittered Flora in her bird-like fashion. ‘We heard you had an accident.’
‘Accident?’ murmured Yuri in innocent amazement. ‘What sort of accident should I have?’
‘Oh, weren’t you shot after all then?’ Daphne sneered with all the charm of a scavenging shark.
Yuri burned to know how she had found out about it, and was determined she shouldn’t have the satisfaction of making him admit anything.
‘No.’ He smiled calmly. ‘I was
nearly stamped on by horse though.’
Having no sense of humour, Daphne chose to ignore his snipe at her equine pursuits and sang out with an accent that could have cut glass, ‘You shouldn’t drink so much and lie in the grass then, dear boy.’
‘Oh really…’ Flora blushed, knowing quite well about Yuri’s fondness for a drink, and being too much of a lady to mention it. ‘We mustn’t embarrass Yuri like that, Daphne.’
‘You will make him think the English are terrible people,’ Irene agreed with her sister. They were probably the only local people forbearing enough to tolerate the friendship of the bossy Daphne Trotter.
‘Beats me where he manages to find the money for drink,’ Daphne went on. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if the Russians gave him a pension to stay in this country.’
Catching the gist of the last comment as she was about to enter, Diana’s foot struck the living-room door with such force that its resulting crash against the sideboard made even the steel-spined Daphne jump.
‘Tea!’ she announced, more by way of a threat than an invitation.
Flora and Irene breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Have you discovered any more of those little planets?’ Flora asked Yuri.
‘I do not think so. They already have been discovered by someone before I see them. I only look for alignments.’
Diana sensed something guarded in Yuri’s manner and when Daphne decided to chip into the conversation, she knew she would have to wait before she could prise anything more from him.
‘What d’you mean? They’re making patterns in the sky or something?’
‘Something like that.’
‘What rubbish,’ she snorted. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘I have good telescope.’
‘All right then. So what does it mean?’
‘Well...’ Yuri began ponderously. ‘Now, you know everything revolves around the sun because of its gravitational attraction?’ The blank faces showed no signs of opposition to that Newtonian principle. ‘Well, when some planets are lined up, this gravitation increases more and more. Eventually, when all the planets are lined up together, the gravitational attraction will be so great they will fall into sun one by one.’
Not realising he was mocking them, Irene and Flora sat listening to him in wide-eyed innocence with the conviction that he was talking about somebody else’s solar system. Daphne darted him a sideways glance that told him he should have been locked up long ago.
Diana took the coward’s way out and asked sweetly, ‘Biscuit anyone?’
Managing to keep Yuri there until Flora, Irene and Daphne had left, Diana remembered his remark about planetoid alignments and was curious to know if this was the story he had told Eva.
Diana came straight to the point. ‘What have you found out about the asteroids then, Yuri?’ He was reluctant to answer. ‘I did tell you about my voice.’
‘I tell Dr Eva and she laugh,’ he said. ‘And she should know what I talk about. They are only interested in listening to scintars and pulsars on other side of infinity. These lumps of local debris are too close for them to waste precious time on, and if they are not interested, what chance would there be of you believing me?’
‘I’m not Eva, am I, Yuri.’ Diana sat beside him on the settee. ‘Would it be so terrible to share the secret with me as well?’
‘Of course not, Diana. You promise not to think me mad though?’
‘Of course not,’ lied Diana.
‘Because if you do not believe me, then I will think I am mad to see such things. I have been watching the planetoids for many years. Long ago I discover that some of these small planets briefly form patterns. I put it down to coincidence. The more I study them, the more I become convinced that these patterns are not natural, even though they have orbits more eccentric than me. It is as though something is guiding their orbits to make pattern in space.’
‘Surely somebody else must have noticed this? You can’t be the only one looking at the asteroid belt.’
‘Of course not. But each planetoid is so small, it is difficult to find one or two at a time, even with photographs. It does not occur to others to mathematically work out their positions in relation to each other over long periods of time.’
‘This is what you’ve been doing?’ asked Diana.
‘For many years. And the more I learn, the more I am convinced that these little bodies are forming themselves into group.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘I do not know. It is like jigsaw pieces coming together.’
‘And forming what?’
‘Huge jigsaw perhaps.’
Diana didn’t like the sound of that. Yuri could only be talking about a new planet. It was absurd, but he sounded convinced.
‘Are you sure?’
Yuri was silent for some while, then replied, ‘I do not want this to be true. But how can I not believe the findings of my own eyes?’
‘Would it matter very much if they did come together and form another planet?’
‘Not as things are now. Their mass would only make very small body which would not affect our position in space. If that were the only thing...’
‘What else?’
Yuri’s voice dropped to a whisper.’ Just in case you do believe me, I dare not tell you. It would be too worrying to you to think about. Just keep calling me crazy so I eventually have to believe you and not worry about it myself.’
‘You are a strange one. What happened to make you like this?’
‘Nothing that terrible perhaps. It isn’t always unreason that addles the brain.’
‘Will you promise me something?’
‘What is it?’ Yuri already half suspected.
‘No more gin - or whisky - or any alcohol. I wouldn’t put it past Daphne and her gallant steed to trample all over you if they did find you lying drunk in the grass.’ Yuri laughed silently at that. ‘She’s a wicked woman,’ Diana insisted. ‘You know that better than I do, and she’s got powerful connections, and doesn’t need to worry about being disliked. What their family never inherited, they bought up.’
‘Do not worry, Diana,’ Yuri told her, ‘I have a good friend and powerful woman on my side as well.’ Diana was flattered by the description, though she would have hardly described herself as a powerful woman.