‘You’ll come down here - by this time next week - and you’ll see that it’s been done. And when you see that it’s been done, that’s when you call me.’
As he left, I realised I hadn’t got his name or address; although I did have his mobile number and I had asked him for his date of birth. I hurriedly scribbled the details in my notebook then returned to Dorothy’s grave.
‘Well, what do you make of that?’ I said. ‘There I was feeling sorry for myself, and asking you to give me a present on your birthday and send me Peter; and it turns out you’re going to get a present after all.’
And smiling happily, I too, left the churchyard in something of a hurry, anxious to relay this news to Bill. With any luck, I would catch him in the local café where he liked to do his morning crossword. Sure enough, there he was, dug-in to his usual booth.
‘You’ll never guess what just happened to me in the churchyard,’ I began, but before I could get much further, the Stonemason himself walked in; acknowledging me with a nod, and Bill with a thumbs-up sign.
‘Do you know him?’ I asked, incredulous. ‘Because that’s the man I just met in the churchyard who offered to restore Dorothy’s headstone.’
‘His name is Kiwi,’ he replied, returning to his crossword.
‘Kiwi? Isn’t that a fruit?’
‘It is, yes.’
‘So, how do you know him?’
‘I met him through Madeleine. He’s a friend of hers.’
I felt my heart sink. ‘Oh.’
‘Yes, don’t worry. You can trust him.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Yes, he is perfectly trustworthy. Comes from an army background.’
‘Really?’
He filled in another clue. ‘So I was told.’
‘It’s an odd name, though, Kiwi, even for a nickname.’
‘Not if you were born in New Zealand. His real name is Peter.’
‘What!’ I nearly shot out of my seat.
‘Thought you’d like that one.’
Now, this really was too much. I’d asked Dorothy to send me Peter and I’d got an ex-army friend of Bill’s twin. This did not bode well. This boded very far from well. Would he do it?
When I got home, I went straight to my Ephemeris. He had the Sun conjunct Mars, conjunct Saturn – rather an apt signature for a stonemason. He had the necessary skills. Oh, and it was improving. His Moon in Aries conjoined my Sun. No wonder I had warmed to him. Even better, he had the Lunar Node in exactly the same degree as Dorothy’s Venus - and my father’s. He had sympathised with my father and wanted to beautify Dorothy’s headstone. He had wanted to, but would he get round to it? Like Dorothy, he lacked the Element of Earth. But then he had a strong Saturn, he might. The chart for the moment I met him would reveal more.
It revealed – more Neptune. Oh, no, would you believe it: there he was again, the old Sea God. Oh, wasn’t it just my luck. Even worse, Mars was opposing Neptune at the Nadir. Was he about to venture overseas? Or drown his sorrows in some other dismal place? His motives, I felt sure, were honourable: Mars in the proud sign of Leo. He had given his word. He would want to fulfil it, but Neptune intervenes; dissolves and confuses. Something - or someone would get in the way.
‘If anything gets in the way,’ said Bill, calling round after lunch, ‘it’ll be you monitoring him.’
‘I’m not monitoring him, I’ve only just met him.’
‘But you will be, if I’m any judge. Will he, won’t he? You’ll be worrying it to death. Just leave it alone and it will happen.’
But the chart turned out right. He didn’t do it that summer, and he hasn’t done it yet. Dorothy continues to subside as the elements do their work; the inscription slowly fading: Neptune at the point of the grave.
‘So, what was all that about?’ I asked Dorothy when I returned from my week in Wales to find he hadn’t made a start on the work. ‘I asked you to send me Peter and you sent the Stonemason Who Never Was. Was that your idea of a joke? Well, I don’t think it’s funny, Dorothy, because I’m all in now, and I really could have done with some help, and what did I get? A fruit, a fruit named Peter!’
Which was when I heard her. Or thought I did. Oh, who knows what I heard. But it was a voice and it didn’t sound like mine. For a start, it was much too calm.
So, Peter was not the man you thought he was.
This felt odd, unnerving. But I stood my ground and stamped my foot.
‘Is that it?’ I demanded.
No response.
‘Now, listen here Dorothy, I know Peter isn’t the man I thought he was; I’m not a complete idiot. I know very well that he isn’t a stonemason from an army background who goes round offering to relieve people of their subsidence; I have grasped that much thank you. So will you please stop messing about and send me the Real One next time. Why? What do you mean, why? Because I want Peter, that’s what I want!’
And I stamped my foot again. But I was running out of steam, and by the time I got home, I was pouring with sweat. I took a bath, but it didn’t really cool me down.
‘Perhaps I should give up,’ I told Bill over dinner. ‘Maybe this strange business with the Stonemason means there is no Peter, it’s all been illusion, and I’m wasting my time.’
He shrugged, ‘Maybe you are. You’re looking for something that doesn’t exist, that’s for sure. And it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, either, Romance, I can promise you that.’
‘I don’t know what I’m looking for.’
‘I thought you were looking for Peter.’
‘Yes, but I’m not sure what Peter represents.’
He shrugged then reached for his wine glass, ‘Peter is Kiwi.’
‘No he isn’t. Peter is not the man I thought he was.’
‘That was your own voice telling you what you already knew.’
‘Yes, I suppose. Oh, I don’t know, Bill, I’m tempted to give up. I haven’t been well. And yet it is such a bizarre coincidence.’
‘That’s exactly what it is, a coincidence.’
‘Yes, but there has to be more to it. I mean, you reach a point where you think, this is a coincidence too far. Well, I feel I’ve reached that point.’
‘You notice these coincidences when other people would ignore them,’ he replied, ‘because you are especially alert to them. And you are especially intuitive because of your childhood. You had to be. We’ve been here before. Of course, when you notice something there’s a message in it, I’m not denying that, but it’s a message from self to self. So, what was it about this coincidence? How do you feel about it?’
‘I think I’m baffled.’
‘Not think, feel.’
‘I’m not sure. Disappointed, I suppose.’
‘Well, there you are then, that’s your answer. You noticed this coincidence because you expect always to be disappointed. That’s what you’re like.’
‘But I was hoping he would do it.’
‘Yes, you are ever hopeful. That’s your first response. But below the surface, you expect to be disappointed, so you notice those experiences, the ones which disappoint.’
‘I often do feel disappointed,’ I agreed.
‘Yes, you do.’
‘But that’s because I often am! Oh, I know what you’re getting at, Bill, but it can’t be the whole truth. It wouldn’t explain all these coincidences. Or why I found Dorothy’s grave in the first place.’
‘Yes, well, who knows about that? Who knows what you were doing in the churchyard that day. You can’t even remember. But you must have been feeling something.’
‘Empty,’ I said, ‘I do remember that because I was filled up.’
‘You felt filled up.’
‘No, I was filled up. And then there was the extraordinary coincidence of Dorothy’s death. Well, that wasn’t just a coincidence.’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘So why do you think I found her grave, and not the grave of, say, Mary Buggins who died of ‘flu’?’
>
‘All right,’ he said, topping up his wine glass. ‘Do you really want to look at this again?’
‘Yes. It might help me sort things out.’
‘Very well, we will. There could be a number of explanations. There may have been something in the colour, the shape or texture of the grave, which appealed to your senses. But it’s more likely that the inscription appealed to your Romanticism. It struck a chord for you. Or it could have been tribal. You were born in Wales. Your mother is Welsh. So you zoomed in on the word, ‘Taffy.’ Then again, there could have been a spy satellite setting you up by beaming thoughts directly into your head. Or a mystic gas emanating from Dorothy’s grave. Or a natural gas. The latter, the Gas Hypothesis, at least, would be checkable.’
‘You believe in things which can be checked?’
‘Not at all. I don’t believe in them. But they do have a virtue. You can find out whether they are right or not. They’re the interesting ones. They get a tick or not.’
‘And what if you can’t find out?’
‘Then it’s idle speculation of course. There are things for which there are no explanations: coincidences, for example. How you take them is a matter of personal choice. But it’s character or temperament that determines how you take them, not some hidden factor explaining how they happen. There’s nothing extra in the coincidence itself. Coincidence is neutral. I take that as a point of logic.’
And with that, he returned to his book of Bridge Moves while I went into my cupboard under the stairs and brought out the chart for my meeting with the Stonemason.
There was something in what Bill had said about disappointment, I felt sure, and I could see it in the chart. I could see it in the connection between this chart and my Birth Chart, for I was born with Neptune in exactly the same place, at the Nadir; where we begin and end. Also the place of the Father.
Had I been disappointed in my father? Surely not. My father had been a hero and I exalted him to any passer-by who would lend an ear. Oh, but wasn’t this what I’d been doing when I met the Stonemason - the Stonemason who was not entirely as he appeared? I began to feel uneasy and wiped the sweat from the back of my neck. Oh, but I had exalted my father, I wasn’t disappointed in him. So that was all right then. It wasn’t possible; I simply couldn’t imagine feeling anything but love for a man who’d been battered half to death on a battlefield. And if he drank too much, that wasn’t his fault. Of course he needed to put himself out. He’d had countless operations on his head. How he suffered while he blamed no one and never complained. And if he gave up in the end, how could I blame him for that? No, I was never disappointed in my father; I missed him. I missed him terribly. I have every confidence in you, he always said. He had been my champion and I was his ‘Little Eyes.’ So that was all right then. Except I was still sweating.
I passed my hand across my forehead, which felt clammy and hot. There was something in this coincidence, if only I could see. Did it have something to do with birthdays? It had been Dorothy’s birthday but I had asked her for a present for myself. Was there something in that? Bill said I couldn’t accept presents, was that true? Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t. Did my father remember my birthday? No. But then he didn’t remember his own. Did Bill remember my birthday? No. And was any of this remotely relevant to anything at all?
I looked up at Bill, still engrossed in his book. He was very perceptive but there was one thing he could not explain to my satisfaction; not through logic, nor psychology; which was this: why do all these strange things keep happening on Dorothy’s and not my father’s grave? Why her? Why Dorothy Browning? And why Peter? There was a connection between Dorothy and Peter; between Bill, my father, the Stonemason and myself. If only I could see. And I tried: I tried very hard to fit the pieces together. But it was no good; I couldn’t see beyond this; and, worse, I had now given myself a splitting headache.
‘I’m off to bed,’ I told Bill, ‘I’ve finished in the kitchen. Will you do the lights?’
‘Uhuh,’ he nodded, still lost in his book.
That night I had a terrifying dream. I was in hospital, in a corridor on a trolley. The door of an operating theatre loomed into view. The Stonemason was the surgeon. Or was he the anaesthetist? He was wearing a mask and a gown but I recognised him at once. The window in the door was blacked-out. There were scalpels and knives. There was a canister of gas. I felt sick. I was terrified. Then it went dark.
Then I was somewhere else. A different dream? A different scene. Except this also involved an operation. Richard, my astrological penfriend was inserting matchsticks under my eyelids to keep them open. He was willing me to see, I could feel it and was doing my utmost to resist. Then the Stonemason was back again. This time carving an epitaph on a marble floor while my father flew over his head. He looked happy. He was bathed in a golden light. But he was still blind. My eyes filled with tears; and then I awoke. I was burning up.
‘Is it any wonder you get ill,’ said Bill, slapping a strip thermometer onto my forehead.
‘You’re not well and you keep going down to the churchyard. Carry on like this, and you’ll be joining her only it won’t be your ovary this time, it’ll be pneumonia.’
‘You were probably delirious,’ said Eleanor, topping up my glass of squash in the morning. ‘These bugs take a long time to work their way out of your system, Nana says. You’re to drink lots of fluids, stay indoors and take Paracetamol four times a day.’
‘She rang, did she?’
‘Yes. So did Jo. And Richard’s coming when he gets back from his holiday.’
‘Ah, so that’s why I dreamed about him.’
‘It was just a nightmare, Mum.’
‘No, he and I go back a long way.’
She smiled, and plumped up my pillow. ‘Now, you’re always telling me you don’t believe in Reincarnation.’
‘I’m not inclined to - but Richard does.’
In my imagination, Richard had lived in the South of France during the Middle Ages; an impression I’d formed on holiday when I came across his exact likeness inscribed in a plaque on the wall of a hotel called, ‘Les Templiers.’ Needless to say, it turned out to be someone from a completely different era, a writer and artist named D’escossy, but he was Richard’s double all right: same sharp features, strong jaw-bone and deep-set eyes. Rather austere, he always wore a black duffle coat: in one pocket, his Midnight Ephemeris; in the other, various homeopathic remedies which he distributed freely to ailing friends.
‘It’s really good of you,’ I said when I met him from his train: ‘What is it?’
‘Aurum,’ he replied, delving into a small brown paper bag. ‘Gold. It’ll strengthen you. The Sulphur is for your skin, the Nat Mur for your other symptoms. And there’s a Blackthorn tonic. You shouldn’t have come out, you know, Gwen, I could have got a taxi.’
‘Oh, Richard,’ I said, taking his arm, ‘you’ve come all this way.’
On our way home, we stopped for coffee in the covered market; spent a pleasant afternoon looking at charts; then he and Bill argued fiercely about the Nature of Reality over tea.
‘The trouble with Richard,’ said Bill, as he left for his game of Bridge, ‘is that he’s got to be right. He has to win. He’s on a crusade.’
‘Oh, well, he is an Aries.’
‘I haven’t got the measure of Bill yet,’ said Richard as we waited for his train. ‘He has a brilliant mind but he doubts everything. You and he argue a lot, don’t you?’
‘You know me, I love a good argument.’
‘But not about anything personal.’
‘Not really.’
‘So, mainly about ideas?’
‘By and large, yes. What are you getting at?’
‘I’m not sure. I shall have to give it some thought and get back to you. Your Mars opposes Saturn doesn’t it?’
‘That’s right. Same as Dorothy.’
‘Hmm, well, that’s not easy of course. And where was Mars when you fell ill? Remind me.’
‘Square my Neptune in Scorpio. Well, that’s the beauty of Astrology, isn’t it: I might be under the weather but at least I can console myself with symbolic fittingness.’
‘It is rather apt. Mars squares your Neptune in Scorpio and you are invaded by a poisonous bug. But you know, Gwen, this didn’t happen the last time Mars was there. You let yourself get very run down. Now, that wasn’t your fault. You were up against it, what with your mother and everything. But you do need, now, to conserve your energy and build yourself up. If you’ll take my advice, you won’t be in any hurry to return to school. Ask the doctor to sign you off for a couple of weeks. And keep away from arguments. I’ll have another think, as I said, and get back to you.’
‘You’ll keep me posted,’ I said.
‘I will.’
Before he could do so, however, Bill and I were arguing again. Only this time, it was about something personal. During the last week of August, and without prior notice, Madeleine arrived to spend a holiday in Oxford - and under his roof.
Couldn’t she stay with friends? I asked. Why did she have to stay in his house? Because, he explained, he needed to rebuild. He needed to get to know his child therefore he needed to reassure her mother. This all sounded perfectly reasonable and I agreed with him. Yet, by the end of the week, I had worked myself up into a fever of grief and rage. It didn’t console me in the least to think that Bill had my interests at heart when he told me not to call round during her visit. Nor did the certain knowledge that he no longer desired Madeleine alleviate my pain. Nothing could ease it. Nothing. Not after the day I ventured out and saw her with the baby: for it had now become real; their dream, fleshed out. They might not be together, but they were united in a way that he and I could never be: in their hope for the future, a beautiful baby girl; dark-haired, well-made, solid; the image of the man I loved. It stopped me in my tracks, this image, and I broke down where I stood. It was too late for me now; I was all done in, barren. But my pain was full of life. It pulsed and heaved inside me; hot, wet, bloody and full of life; twisting and turning in monstrous parody of the child which may once have been, but which would not now be, ever. Turning into the churchyard, I leaned against the wall and wept. I was still weeping when Bill telephoned from a call-box later that night.
To You The Stars Page 9