To You the Stars
Wendy Cartwright
Fortune Green Press
This edition published 2015
Copyright © Wendy Cartwright 2015
All rights reserved
www.toyouthestars.co.uk
In memory of
Albert and Marian Cartwright,
and Roberta Allen.
‘Our task is to stamp this provisional, perishing earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its being may rise again ‘invisibly’ in us.’
Rainer Maria Rilke
On Being and the Transitory
Neptune
Dorothy Browning
Taffy
July 11th 1947
To you the stars,
narcissi fields,
and music.
Peter
I can’t remember when I first found Dorothy’s grave. The trees were in blossom so it would have been springtime but beyond that I have no idea. I can’t even remember whether I had met Bill or not by then. My guess is, probably not. But really it is all a blur. I wasn’t much of a record keeper before I became an astrologer. Of course, now that I am an astrologer, it frustrates me intensely to think that among my hundreds of charts of every description, I haven’t got the one for the all-important moment of discovering Dorothy’s grave. I’ve got Birth Charts, Death Charts, Horaries and Decumbitures; charts for missing persons, errant spouses and misdirected mail. But have I got the one which I, personally, need, in order to make sense of it all? No; therefore I will have to make do with what my Aquarian friend, Annie, would call, ‘conditional reality’ – with what actually happened.
What happened was this.
One day, while wandering in my local churchyard, I came across the long-neglected grave of Dorothy Browning. I imagine I must have been feeling rather empty at the time because I do remember, very vividly, the sensation, while standing on the grave, of being filled-up. Not with joy, or love, or wonder; or anything I can define; but with a kind of warm sympathy – a bit like taking a warm bath only on the inside. It rose from the earth through my feet, this warmth, spreading throughout my body until I was full, whereupon it flowed out and I flowed with it, out and across and into everything in the churchyard. That’s the best I can do with words because there were no words in it, only feeling. Quite where I went after that, I have no idea. I simply stood there, taking it all in, until I was full, and then I flowed out: I only became aware of time and place as, very gradually, I came round.
This felt rather like being inside a photograph during the developing process: the trees, headstones, church tower, foliage; my feet, bare legs and plump hands emerging as through a film of oily liquid: various greens, greys, ochres and umbers separating and clarifying until, at last, I recognised my surroundings and began rubbing myself down.
I had in mind an image of Aladdin, rubbing the lamp to release the genie; only I was rubbing myself back in. I rubbed my feet, calves, thighs, knees and elbows; the tops of my arms, the front of my chest and the back of my neck. I then walked round the grave a few times, stopping to read the inscription again, this time, critically: -
Dorothy Browning. Taffy. July 11th, 1947. To you the stars, narcissi fields and music. Peter.
Hmm, I’ll bet they weren’t married, I thought. There was none of the usual, ‘Beloved Wife and Mother Of.’ No, they were lovers rather than spouses; and she had died young.
I could see Dorothy; a young, dark-haired woman with Celtic good looks, small feet and large eyes. Peter, I couldn’t imagine at all. I had never met the kind of man who could express feelings poetically: well, not to me at any rate; but I had met lots of soulful Welsh women. Indeed, I was even related to some of them. So, Dorothy, ‘Taffy’, yes, I could picture her: small-boned, dark-haired, blue-eyed, pretty. Not stylish or fashionably dressed. Her skirt would have been a fraction too straight for the post-war, ‘New Look;’ her stockings not quite sheer enough, though she may have favoured slightly impractical shoes and would always have worn a hat. Nothing too extravagant, mind you: she wouldn’t have wanted to draw attention to herself; for although she had plenty of spirit (she’d left home, after all, in dangerous times) she wasn’t bold. And, besides, she would never have forgotten her mother’s warnings on the subject of Vanity, even though, in her innocence, she would not have understood where it might lead.
That Dorothy had been an Innocent, I felt quite sure. Why else would Peter have desired for her, the stars, narcissi fields and music? No, she had been an Innocent Abroad, compelled by the exigencies of wartime to leave her beloved homeland, and it had all proved too much for her sensitive constitution: she had wasted away and died. And nothing - not even a love as strong as Peter’s - held the power to save her.
Again, I can’t remember how long I stood there, marvelling at the quality of this love, although I do recall wondering whether anyone would ever love me as deeply. I may even have wished for it, albeit without much conviction: I’d have been hard-pressed, in those days, to put my whole heart and soul into a wish. No, I expect I whispered it, hoping that it might come true while thinking that it probably wouldn’t, for although I had always been a Great Believer in Love, I’d never quite managed it myself.
Nowadays, of course, I have the benefit of knowing that Venus, in my Birth Chart, is somewhat, ‘afflicted,’ let’s say, by nebulous Neptune, but in those days, I could only think I was doomed because I was a bungler. Never in the right place at the right time, I was always having incongruous encounters overseas: - the Parisian artist, for one, who’d invited me to come up and behold his latest works, turned out to be a painter and decorator:
‘Well, what do you think?’ he asked, opening the studio apartment doors to reveal four walls painted white with a hint of apricot.
Then there was the Serbian student who revived me after a rucksack (with kettle attached) fell onto my head on a train bound for Athens. Ah, I can see him now: his magnificent cheekbones and tortured expression. For two years, we wrote every week until his letters and my address book mysteriously vanished.
Equally baffling was the sudden disappearance of my daughter’s father, a Pisces. We had just moved in to live together when he announced he must follow his dream wherever it might lead; and was last heard playing guitar on a cruise ship bound for the Canaries.
Yes, well; no wonder I got the idea that love wasn’t something I could quite pin down; and this wasn’t something I changed my mind about either, as a result of my experience in the churchyard that day. I didn’t come away from Dorothy’s grave inspired by the new belief that love wasn’t beyond me after all. I didn’t come away feeling any differently from the way I had always felt. Something weird had happened. I didn’t understand it. I was baffled. So I went home and ate my tea.
Looking back, I don’t recall making a conscious decision to adopt Dorothy’s grave. It just so happened that over the next few years, whenever I had an hour or two to spare (which wasn’t often) I would go down to the churchyard and tidy things up a bit: cutting back brambles, pulling up bindweed and trimming the overhanging branches of trees. Usually, I was busy on the grave itself, but every now and again, I would sit myself down on a neighbouring plinth to relax and enjoy whatever spectacle the churchyard had to offer; for there was usually something untoward, if not downright illegal, going on within its bounds.
Situated, as it is, in the heart of Oxford’s ‘Bohemian Quarter,’ the churchyard provided something of a recreation ground for residents and transients alike. Sisters of Mercy, elderly couples, single mothers, juvenile delinquents: here they would come from all walks of life to stroll, browse, ruminate and congregate; to walk their dogs, feed stray cats, burn their rubbish and bury a well-loved famil
y pet. Drug-dealers, law-enforcers, hardened-drinkers, power-walkers - you even got the occasional member of the Church of England passing through.
Come to think of it, I may even have spotted Bill in there once (though this was not how we met) demolishing a dry stone wall with his pickaxe and carting huge chunks of it across the main road in his wheelbarrow (I later discovered he was building a pond). About the only person I did not see in the churchyard in those days was the vicar.
One evening, I decided to go and smoke the vicar out, as it were. I had been doing some weeding on Dorothy’s grave, and was just thinking about calling it a day, when it occurred to me that the vicar might know something about Dorothy and Peter. After all this was no ordinary inscription; and, for all I knew, their story could well have become a local legend. So, brushing myself free of twigs and scraping the mud off my boots, I ran my fingers through my hair, gathered up my tools, and headed off in the direction of the New Rectory.
Passing the old one as I went, I felt rather sorry that the Church appeared to have abandoned it. This New Rectory felt cold to me: cold and modern; which, I have to say, was also my impression of the vicar. Throughout our interview, he kept me standing on the threshold while he maintained a resolute grip on the half-open door, shunting it forwards an inch or so each time he answered a question.
No, the name Browning did not ring a bell; he was not aware of this particular grave.
Yes, I had clearly experienced something unusual in the churchyard; but thank you, no, he did not want a copy of the inscription.
Yes, the Church kept records, but he couldn’t let me in to see them without an appointment. And, besides, that particular parish register was no longer kept in the church.
There now remained between us about five fraught inches of space, and I was sorely tempted to stick my foot into it but he closed the door before I could make a move after wishing me a terse, ‘Good Evening.’
As I returned along the gravel driveway, I felt a mixture of disappointment and anger. Frustrated in my wish to share what I had experienced on Dorothy’s grave with someone I hoped might be able to explain it for me, I also felt angered by the vicar’s indifference and lack of Charity. He might have thought me a crank, but at least he could have offered me a cup of tea, and I cursed him under my breath as I slammed the gate soundly on the New Rectory and its incumbent.
‘You won’t catch me in here again,’ I growled, ‘not even at Christmas.’
But before long, I was happily eating a chocolate bar and talking myself out of my feelings. Maybe I wasn’t meant to find out about Dorothy. Maybe it wasn’t important, or the time wasn’t right. After all, didn’t I have quite enough to do already without taking on a research project to boot? No, I should leave well alone, I decided; and by the time I arrived home, had more or less managed to push Dorothy to the back of my mind. Oh, I continued to visit her grave from time to time, calling round on her anniversary with a bunch of flowers, but many years would pass before circumstances conspired to arouse my interest in her story again; prompted, this time, by beings of an altogether more worldly nature: my mother and Bill.
You’ll forgive me, I hope, since we are still under the aegis of boundless Neptune; planet of true compassion, heartfelt sympathy and redemption through long-suffering, if I take a little time to meander in the mysterious realms of my relationship with Bill, trusting that it is all for a higher purpose.
I first met Bill during the autumn of 1992 (for me, a Saturn transit; for him, a blind date) and was immediately struck by a quality in his aura like heavy water. I did not know then, of course, that his Pluto conjoined my Ascendant, but it still felt fated. Having said this, it did not appear destined to last and, after a few months, we went our separate ways only to meet up again some four years later outside the local supermarket. By this time I had taken up Astrology while he had taken up with a beautiful and brilliant mathematician who had left him, he was sorry to report, after two years, for the City of London.
‘The whole of it?’ I asked incredulous.
‘The Banks,’ came his reply. ‘What else do you do with an Oxford Degree these days? It’s where the money is.’
‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that, Bill,’ I said, and muttered something about there not being too much money in Astrology - with or without a degree.
‘In what?’ It was his turn to look amazed.
‘In Astrology. That’s what I’m doing these days.’
‘You were a History teacher the last time I looked.’
‘I still am,’ I replied. ‘But I managed to reduce my hours so I can get on with my Astrology. I really love it. It’s another language. Great fun.’
He nodded sagely. ‘You’ve had a breakdown then since we last met. Oh, well, you probably needed one.’
‘Oh, I don’t think I have,’ I replied cheerfully. ‘Well, not so I noticed. Mind you, I’m a lot less anxious nowadays. And I’ve stopped switching the electricity off at the mains before I leave the house.’
‘Ah, but have you stopped putting the alarm clock on the stove before you go out?’
‘I have indeed.’
‘And what about your endearing habit of wearing wellington boots in bed when lightning strikes?’
I smiled, ‘Yes, I’ve stopped all that as well. I still pull out the plugs, of course – but not in other people’s houses.’
‘Your social life will have improved then.’
‘Oh, don’t know about that, Bill; I’m far too busy for a social life. But I must say, I’m surprised that you remember my endearing nocturnal habits after all this time.’
‘Oh, come now, Gwendolen,’ he chided. ‘How on earth could I have forgotten those? Really, you always manage to make it sound as though your habits are perfectly normal, and that you, yourself, are a singularly unexceptional member of the average population whereas, in fact, you are quite mad.’
‘No, I’m not,’ I replied, ‘I’m normal. I’m a very normal person with traditional values.’
‘You think so, do you?’ He grinned as he lit a cigarette. ‘Of course, most compulsives tend to find their condition is improved by a course of therapy or drug treatment but that wouldn’t be normal enough for you. No, you find a remedy in Astrology, which proves it - you are mad. Not that I’m knocking it. If it works for you, fair enough.’
‘I didn’t say Astrology cured me of my habits,’ I put in irritably. ‘But, no, don’t knock it, Bill, because it does work in my experience, although in rather mysterious ways.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Yes.’ I replied emphatically, pulling out my Pocket Ephemeris, and pointing out that the sudden ending of his love affair had coincided with a transit of disruptive Uranus to his Venus in Aquarius - but not to worry because he could now look forward to a Jupiter Return.
‘And that’s good news, is it?’
‘Yes. Well, you know, Jupiter, Father of the Gods. It’s meant to be a time of opportunity and expansion.’
‘Oh yes? Only you don’t sound too sure.’
‘No, I’m never too sure about Jupiter transits to be honest. I had Jupiter transiting my Sun when my father died which was hardly my idea of an opportunity. Far from it.’
‘Oh, but it was. It surely was.’ He took another pull on his cigarette while pausing for thought. ‘Hmm, presumably it’s up to the individual how they take these opportunities?’
‘I suppose so,’ I replied.
‘And I’ve got Jupiter, you say?’
‘That’s right, you have.’
‘In that case, I shall take advantage of this opportunity and invite my astrologer out to dinner.’
So, that was that: reunited under the auspices of Jupiter and a Progressed New Moon. And it was good, very jovial and expansive, for quite some time: we went punting; we went on picnics; we went out for meals. He even took me to dinner in College once. As for the longer term, I remained unsure; and it didn’t help that lacking his time of birth, I couldn’t erect his full Horos
cope in order to compare it with mine. This annoyed me no end, as I’m sure you can imagine; though I got enormous pleasure out of speculating what Bill’s Ascendant might be.
Could it be Leo (like mine) he was certainly flamboyant enough in public. Or Pisces (for such a tall man, he had unusually small feet). Or even Capricorn (he sat with his shoulders hunched). Astrologer friends declared in favour of Scorpio, alerted, no doubt, by his penetrating gaze and enigmatic expression. But I still had my doubts. I preferred Sagittarius: sign of the Philosopher (the Archer Aims his Bow towards the Heavens) though a story he once told me – and which really captured my imagination – suggested Gemini, sign of the Twins.
He had the vague idea, he once told me, that he had not been alone in the womb, but that his twin had died early on in the pregnancy before his mother even knew that she was pregnant. He had read somewhere that this could happen. Indeed, he had made a mental note of the facts:
‘Seventeen per cent of embryos start off as twins,’ he announced, ‘which means, of course, that one in five of us are killers.’
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