‘Go on, indulge me,’ I’d said, ‘just this once.’
I was wearing my black velvet dress. I had cooked a wonderful meal. The evening was young. And by the end of it, the Key Events of Bill’s Life ran to thirteen sides of A4.
And here they were still, neatly tucked inside a padded envelope. Smiling, I pulled them out, thoroughly enjoying this trip down Memory Lane, and laughing at the comments he had written in the margins.
First Love? Aged sixteen. (Peaked early)
Childhood Illnesses? (Too many to mention)
Operations? (Did an in-growing toe nail count?)
Various academic qualifications were followed by a long list of women’s names:
Lorna, Jennifer, Kathleen, Sally (Same generation)
Melanie, Hannah, Rebecca (Getting younger by the minute)
Ali, Toni, Vic and Trish (Shorter too).
So, I had asked him, could he remember when we first met?
‘No,’ he’d replied. ‘Can you?’
Sadly, I could not.
But he had remembered the exact time and place when he had met Naomi, the brilliant and beautiful mathematician, who had left him for the City of London before we met up again. And not only the details but how he had felt. And there it was, in my own handwriting: at ten minutes past two in the afternoon of July 11th 1994, in the King’s Arms. Instant Recognition.
July 11th?
I felt the temperature in the room drop. I looked up at the door and glanced around the room. No, no one there, I was imagining things. Lifting my cardigan from the back of my chair, I wrapped it around my shoulders and returned to the list. How on earth could I have overlooked this at the time? I knew very well that I had discovered Dorothy’s grave before I became an astrologer, yet there was nothing to suggest I had made the connection. Could I have made a mistake and written July instead of June? That didn’t seem unlikely. After all, I still had a long way to go before meeting my mother’s standards – a hell of a long way, I realised, as I opened my diary. Yes, I had forgotten to record the date Bill met Madeleine. So, what was it he’d said now, the night I met up with him, the night of my dream? ‘A fortnight ago, give or take a day or two on either side.’ And I had met him on July 24th. Close. Close enough. So, what had I been doing on the 11th? ‘Eczema flared up,’ was all it said. Oh, right. Bill, had been out and about in broad daylight falling in love with his twin, and what was I doing on Dorothy’s anniversary? Rotting.
Closing my diary, I rubbed my eyes then gazed at my reflection in the window pane. ‘You can read too much into these things,’ I told myself. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’ So, why did I feel like crying? Who was this pathetic creature gazing blankly into a pane of glass feeling sorry for herself? Surely not me. And, really, there was no need. Bill would not have chosen that particular day on purpose. He didn’t believe in Fate; he didn’t believe in Coincidence. There were three hundred and sixty five days in the year, and they were all the same to him. So, I pushed it away, the sad and lonely thought: they were all the same to him, but not to me.
After this discovery I experienced a marked loss of interest in Dorothy’s story. A couple of days later, her Marriage Certificate arrived in the post. I did not go charging off to St Giles Church with a bunch of red roses. Nor did I erect a chart for this event. It could have been the Gas Bill landing on the doormat for all I cared. I opened the envelope, noted its contents then filed it away. In the same period, Wilfrid’s Birth Certificate arrived. So, he had been a Capricorn - so what? Again, I noted the contents and filed it away. October drew to its close, without my opening my Ephemeris, visiting Dorothy’s grave or entering a single event in my diary until one day towards the end of the month, I drove down to Wales to visit my mother - who reminded me before I could even sit down.
‘Have you brought me your next chapter?’ she demanded.
‘No. I’ve brought you some coconut creams. You like those. And I baked you a cake.’
‘A cake? What’s got into you? I don’t want a cake. I want another chapter. I want to see you finish something. I can still read you know. Well, you can put it in the post when you get back. Now, have you got a pen and paper? I want you to make an inventory.’
‘But, Mum, why?’
‘In case I move, of course. I don’t want them thinking I’ve taken anything that doesn’t belong to me.’
‘Oh, Mum, do we have to? I’ve just driven for hours and I’m feeling a bit shaky.’
‘All the more reason to do something useful then so you can get your bearings.’
‘All right. All right.’
Fortunately, Eleanor had already produced an exercise book and was carefully logging every movable item in the room. This felt completely insane. It also felt reassuringly normal. At last, my mother declared herself satisfied and ready for her trip to the sea front where she had great fun hurtling along the promenade in her wheelchair with Eleanor at the helm.
‘Oh, you’re no fun,’ she said when I suggested we head back; and turned to give Eleanor a conspiratorial smile: ‘She’s no fun, is she, your mother. Come on, Nell, let’s have one more go. Just you and me. One more for the road.’
But I could see she was getting tired and feeling the cold; shivering under her tartan blanket and clutching her handbag full of sweets.
‘We should go back now,’ I repeated.
But she shook her head anxiously, ‘No, not yet. Oh why are you always in such a hurry? You must allow me to collect my thoughts.’
This was no longer easy for her to do; and it was the hardest thing for me to watch, the struggle she had with her memory. Where had it gone? She hadn’t lost it completely. I imagined it had just moved house. For her eyes were wet with memory; they were drenched with memory therefore it could not have gone for good.
‘Just give me another minute, Gwendolen, please.’
So, we waited: watching the clouds, watching the swell of the sea and the swooping gulls while she plucked at the sleeve of her cardigan. This would take quite some time.
At last she brightened, ‘I knew it. I knew there was something.’
And slipping her good hand into her pocket, she brought out a small calling card: Dorothy’s inscription.
‘Now, this is important. Don’t think me critical but you made a mistake. It’s for you the stars, narcissi fields and music; not to you, which is what you wrote in your Neptune chapter. Promise me you’ll change it.’
‘Yes, yes, don’t worry.’
‘You won’t forget?’
‘No, I’ll do it as soon as I get back.’
‘Because it’s very important, Gwendolen. It’s essential to get the details right.’
‘Yes, Mum. Don’t worry. I won’t forget.’
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that, on this occasion, she had got the details wrong. Nor did I have the heart to tell her that Dorothy wasn’t Welsh. It didn’t seem to matter now that she’d come home.
‘All right then.’ I nodded for Eleanor to release the brakes. But as she did so, my mother lurched forward and grabbed my wrist.
‘I wanted to write,’ she said, pressing it into me. ‘I wanted to write.’
‘You did, Mum,’ I said, remembering her diaries. ‘You always did.’
‘She’ll be all right,’ said Eleanor as we began the journey home. ‘She’s got Uncle Dan, and Auntie Alison, and the Girls. She’ll be fine once she’s settled in.’
I nodded and swallowed the urge to cry. She wasn’t coming back: I knew that now, and life was going to be very different without my mother around the corner, recording my every deed and going through my bank statements with a red pen. For her too. What would she do with her time now that she could no longer wield a pen? All her papers, notebooks, diaries, I now kept. And I had left her with a handbag full of sweets.
* * * * *
Having spent the best part of four hours at the wheel returning from Wales (thanks to road-works on the M4 and high winds on the Severn Bridge) I was rea
lly hoping for a lazy Sunday afternoon at home the next day, but no such luck. Just as I was settling down with a milky coffee and a good read, my mother rang on her new telephone demanding that I go down to Dorothy’s grave and tidy it up.
‘It’s Halloween,’ she announced (as if she had been a lifelong pagan).
‘Yes, I know.’
‘Well, according to your beliefs, it’s the Festival of the Dead. So I thought you could kill two birds with one stone: go and pay your respects and do what needs to be done before the winter. I know you’ve been neglecting it, Gwendolen. You can’t pull the wool over my eyes. You haven’t been down there for ages, I know.’
‘Mum, you don’t believe in Life after Death.’
‘No, but you do. Now, I’ve said my piece, I shall leave you get on with it.’
‘Better do as you’re told, Mum,’ said Eleanor, peering over her magazine.
So, gathering up my tools, I went. And not in a very good mood, I should add: at the tender age of forty-two, I was still taking orders from my mother; my wheelbarrow had a dodgy tyre; and my garden shears (which I’d left out in the rain) were covered in rust. But as luck would have it, it turned out I wouldn’t need them.
When I got to the churchyard, I found that someone had beaten me to it. Someone had beaten a path through the nettles; laying - by way of stepping stones - a trail of broken up cardboard boxes which stopped about a foot short of grave. Meanwhile, the earth had been freshly dug; and a jam jar containing a single rose sat propped against the headstone, wedged between two stones.
‘Well. Who’s been visiting my grave?’ I said. ‘Come on, Dorothy, what’s going on here? Have you got a secret admirer, or what? Because if you have, I think I should be told.’
No response.
‘Oh, come on Dorothy,’ I repeated, tapping my forehead, ‘Who is it? Who, apart from me, would visit your grave? It’s not as though you’ve got any relatives, is it? Well, not that I know of. And you are a bit off the beaten track down here. So, what’s going on, I wonder? Come on, Dorothy. Who is it? Who’s the interloper? Who, apart from me, has been visiting your grave?’
As far as I could remember, I hadn’t told too many people about Dorothy’s grave. Excluding family members (as suspects) my list comprised: Bill, Joanna, two vicars and an archivist; Martin, the Friendly Librarian, and Lily who fed the churchyard cats. I may have mentioned it - in passing - to a handful of teaching colleagues; and I had certainly mentioned it to my astrological pen friend, Richard, many times. However, he lived north of Birmingham; and I could hardly see Richard, keen gardener though he was, nipping down to Oxford for an afternoon of churchyard clearance. Neither could I quite imagine Bill, who had enough trouble managing his own unwieldy garden, in that role. No, much as I enjoyed the image of Bill thrashing his way through the nettles with his grandfather’s rusty old scythe, I didn’t think it very likely. On the other hand, in a certain mood, he might consider it rather a good joke - and he did live very close by. I looked again at the single rose. Could this be a sign that all was no longer blissful in the twin bed, and could this be his way of letting me know? Not that he had ever given me a red rose, but he had once given me a bag of seed potatoes and a bunch of daffs.
Oh, what the hell, why not, I thought, as I left the churchyard to cross the road; it was worth a try. She might be in, she might not be; but surely after all this time, I ought to be able to face them at home. Even so, my pulse was racing as I knocked on the front door.
I needn’t have worried. She wasn’t in. Nor did I detect the slightest hint of a female presence as I followed him down the dark and narrow hallway into the kitchen. His grandfather’s chair was piled high, as always, with student essays, journals and newspapers. Several black bags containing washing sat stubbornly on the quarry-tiled floor like guests who refused to go home; and the sink was brimming over with crockery.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve been visiting my grave, have you?’ I said, shifting some papers to make myself comfortable.
‘Not yet, no. Cup of tea?’
‘Yes, please. Only someone has, and it isn’t me.’
‘How very strange, and you suspect me?’
‘Well, I did think it was the sort of thing you might do on a whim.’
‘No, if it were up to me, I’d have you cremated. Sugar?’
‘No, thanks. Well, if it wasn’t you, I wonder who it was. It’s very odd.’
‘Yes,’ he said, giving me a cryptic look. ‘Isn’t it.’
‘I suppose it could have been Martin,’ I said vaguely.
‘Martin?’
‘Martin, the Friendly Librarian. He’s been helping me out with my research.’
‘Has he indeed?’
‘Yes, but I doubt it was him, actually. He looks pretty normal to me.’
‘Not the man for you then.’
‘Oh, no, Bill, I’m not interested in him in that way. I just like him, that’s all. I told him about my mystical experience and he’s become quite interested. It was thanks to him I found Wilfrid.’
‘Wilfrid? Martin? Could this be the same One Man Woman? Really, Gwendolen, you have been busy. I should leave you more often.’
At this, his face clouded over. I could see him almost bite his lip. According to his version of events, I had left him whereas from my point of view, it was the other way around. I didn’t challenge this, however, because I didn’t want an argument; and, besides, he quickly moved the conversation on. Soon we were chatting, just like old times, about College, the allotment and my research. Familiar stuff, really. But it was nice. I felt we could still be friends. Before I left, I asked if he could call in at Exeter on my behalf and enquire about Wilfrid’s paintings since he knew someone who worked there.
‘Mind you, it’ll probably turn out to be another red herring,’ I said, waving him goodbye.
By now, there had been so many peculiar twists in the tale of Dorothy Browning, it wouldn’t have surprised me if her husband’s long-lost masterpieces had been destroyed by an art-hating militant atheist: after all, he had painted, ‘the Rector’s Hall’ and ‘the College Chapel.’ What did surprise me was that Bill got in touch again so soon: the same evening in fact.
The Sun was in Scorpio, the Moon in Leo and Cancer ascended, placing a powerful Mars in Capricorn on the opposite cusp when Bill telephoned to advise me that I had probably got a stalker. He had been thinking, he said, about the strange business of the unknown visitor to Dorothy’s grave, and had reached the conclusion that I could be in danger, especially since a woman had recently been attacked in the churchyard.
‘Really?’ I said. ‘I haven’t heard about that.’
‘I believe it was in the papers,’ he replied. ‘But then you don’t read the papers, or watch the local news. Then again, it may have been hearsay. Either way, my point is that a woman was attacked in the churchyard and the assailant hasn’t been caught, so I’m suggesting you be more careful. I wouldn’t go down there alone if I were you, at least for the time being. I don’t want to bury you yet.’
‘You don’t want to bury me at all,’ I retorted, ‘You’d have me cremated.’
‘Will you listen, I’m being serious. You know, for someone so neurotic you can be remarkably reckless at times – which is par for the course, I suppose.’
‘I know I can be reckless, Bill,’ I replied, ‘but I promise you nothing bad is going to happen to me while I’m visiting Dorothy’s grave. I feel perfectly safe there. For me, it’s sacred ground.’
‘Yes, yes. But let’s assume this stalker doesn’t know that, shall we? Let’s assume he doesn’t know about the mystic emanations that unaccountably arise from Dorothy’s grave. For him you are just an ordinary woman - albeit possessed of certain Venusian charms - he doesn’t know you, remember. No, for him, you’re an easy target; and he remains blissfully unaware - as he lunges from his stake-out in the bushes - that’s he’s about to incur the wrath of God. Or, he may not care. Damned for all eternity, he thinks, but
worth it.’
‘Oh, stop it,’ I laughed. ‘Of course I haven’t got a stalker. You’re winding me up.’
‘No, I’m not. It is possible that you’ve been watched.’
‘All right then, Bill, if I’ve got a stalker - which I don’t believe I have - why would he leave a neat little trail of cardboard for me to walk on – unless he’s Walter Raleigh and he thinks I’m Good Queen Bess. Well, it’s hardly the action of a maniac, is it? In fact, it’s rather a thoughtful thing to do.’
‘Oh, no doubt he has his tender loving side. Or he could be trying to win your confidence, to soften you up before he moves in for the kill. We don’t know his motives. What we do know is that the churchyard isn’t a safe place for a woman at the moment. We know this for a fact.’
‘All right,’ I softened. ‘I’ll take more care.’ Although I had no intention of changing my habits, I appreciated his concern. ‘Thank you,’ I added.
‘You’re very welcome.’
But he didn’t sound too anxious to sign off. ‘So, what are you up to at the moment? Writing your memoirs, I suppose.’
‘No; it’s Halloween.’
‘Ah, so you’ll be out there communing with your ancestors.’
‘I will be, at some point. Then again, I might have visitors.’
‘Women only?’
‘If you haven’t got anything better to do, Bill, by all means come round.’
I always celebrate Halloween. It’s the only Festival I observe apart from Christmas. On Christmas Eve, I go to Midnight Mass. On Halloween, I bring out the family photographs, and recite all their names - as my grandmother taught me – which was what I was doing when Bill arrived.
‘Well now,’ he said, sniffing the air in my kitchen. ‘What have you got brewing in this pot: eye of newt, toe of Philosopher?’
‘It’s punch,’ I replied. ‘Help yourself.’
‘Thank you, I will. Well, I must say, this isn’t like you, Gwendolen, drinking alone. Come to think of it, you don’t drink. Are you expecting someone else?’
To You The Stars Page 6