To You The Stars

by Wendy Cartwright

  ‘Aren’t you going to congratulate me?’

  ‘No. You haven’t finished yet. You’ve got to find Peter. Anyway, she might not have remembered the right one. I hadn’t got Dorothy down as Anglo Catholic.’

  But I felt convinced felt that Mrs Hawes had remembered the right person. Without any prompting from me, she had recalled that Dorothy had been married and childless: she had also remembered specific details. Having said this, when I later met her in person, something came up which caused me a few doubts.

  I was in the churchyard one afternoon, helping to transcribe inscriptions, when the project leader introduced me to Mrs Hawes. A tall, slender and elegant woman, she didn’t say much, just looked at me very intently while I gave her an account of my research.

  At last, she spoke: ‘Did you say she was forty-five when she died?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Only I had the impression of an older person.’

  ‘No, she was definitely forty-five.’

  ‘Hmm, I definitely had a much older person in mind.’

  ‘Adults often appear older than they are to children, don’t they?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘She may have been ill when you met her,’ I added. ‘She had ovarian cancer.’

  ‘I suppose that could explain it. I hadn’t realised how she died.’

  But she continued regarding me intently. Had she seen me somewhere else, I wondered - on local television perhaps, doing my weekly forecasts?

  ‘Well, I hope it is the right Dorothy,’ I said, ‘because I really don’t think I can start again from scratch!’

  Suddenly, she brightened. ‘I haven’t remembered anything else since I spoke to you on the telephone - except that she wore a cloak.’

  ‘A cloak?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. She often wore a long cloak.’

  So, Dorothy Browning: A colourful and cultured Christian; not tall, who fraternised with nuns, may have written poetry, always wore a hat - and now a cloak. Well, let’s hope it wasn’t black, and let’s hope it wasn’t a pointy hat.

  After delivering the Good News to my mother that October evening, I decided that I would examine the chart for the moment I first contacted Mrs Hawes. It turned out to be rather revealing. True, it did show me in the Third House (of telephone calls) but it also mirrored the chart for the moment Eleanor found Dorothy in the parish register. Same angles; Uranus rising and Pluto culminating. Meanwhile - and this is what confirmed it for me – Jupiter, planet of Faith, conjoined the Nadir, the very root of it. This could hardly have been more apt. But did it show where I was headed next?

  Astrologers might look askance at the Void of Course Moon in Pisces. Was I about embark on another wild goose chase? Yes. On my next day off, I spent many a happy hour tucked away in the library with my illicit sandwiches, ploughing through back copies of the parish magazine, and reading volume upon volume of religious and romantic verse; but although I did unearth an obscure woman poet named Dorothy Browning whose, ‘Castles in the Sand,’ rather appealed, the dates didn’t fit. Before long, however; and thanks to the fortuitous intervention of my friend Joanna’s mother (who had recently completed a degree in English Literature) I was introduced to the works of Peter Baker. M.C. War poet and adventurer.

  At last, I thought. Baker had been Dorothy’s maiden name. Could he have been a distant relative? It didn’t seem unlikely. Her inscription seemed just the sort of thing he may have penned as one of the post-war, ‘New Romantics.’ The critic I read didn’t think much of them; ‘sentimental, derivative and arrogant,’ or words to that effect; but I didn’t let his judgment put me off, and therefore spent the best part of my October half term, trying to establish a relationship between Dorothy and Peter Baker: - an attempt which brought me into conversation with an archivist at Conservative Party Headquarters; a helpful private secretary, and several elderly Tory ladies in the Southern Shires (one of whom kindly sent me his photograph, which I kept for a while on my bedside table to inspire me in my quest).

  Delighted to find that Peter Baker and I shared the same birthday, I pursued him with great zeal - only to discover that he had been arraigned in 1954 on charges of embezzlement, cast out of the Commons and sentenced to eight years in Wormwood Scrubs. He may have escaped from the Gestapo twice and won the Military Cross but he was no match for the representatives of British Justice.

  Oh, but I really liked him. It didn’t bother me in the least that he had been a reckless adventurer, and alleged misappropriator of funds. It still, however, seemed to bother Conservative Central Office. I found him thanks to one of the obliging Tory Ladies in the Southern shires. The archivist I spoke to couldn’t find any trace of him in their records.

  Yet another War hero vanishes. Yet another hero fails to receive due recognition. And because I’d got rather fond of this Peter – who’d undergone a religious conversion in prison following a Dark Night of the Soul - I was really hoping he would turn out to be the One. Ah, if only. If only I could find a connection between Dorothy and Peter Baker then I would rest content. And, I worked very hard on it, believe you me, reading his entire poetic opus, as well as his prison memoir, ‘Time Out of Life,’ all in the hope of finding a mention of her name.

  He had been a publisher, in one of his many guises. She had been a private secretary in one of hers. Could he have employed her at some point? Could he have learned of her death and commissioned the headstone by way of thanks? It certainly seemed to me the kind of impulsive and generous gesture he would have made. He had been an Aries, with Mars in expansive Sagittarius. His Neptune in Leo exactly conjoined Dorothy’s Sun. He may never have met her, but if he had, he would surely have been entranced. But, alas, the longed-for connection did not materialise. The only thing he had in common with Dorothy, as far as I could establish (aside from the shared surname) was that they had both died untimely, aged forty-five.

  ‘My narrator,’ I told Bill, when I called round to see him, ‘wishes to discover that Peter was a romantic poet with a distinguished War record who was tortured by the Gestapo, once employed Dorothy as his secretary, sympathised with her predicament and admired her literary powers.’

  ‘Oh, yes? And I imagine the Philosopher character wishes he was cat meat.’

  ‘Oh come on, Bill, don’t be like that. I thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘Pleased? I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you for the past eight weeks and now you bring me another dead thing. You are unbelievable, Gwendolen, do you know that? The most self-centred woman I have ever met.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think that’s very fair, Bill. I have called round before now to see how you are, and you haven’t been in. Besides, you could always have contacted me.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘All right, if you’re going to be like that, I’ll go home – without giving you your present.’

  ‘Now, why would you want to give me a present?’

  ‘To say thank you. For Peter Baker. It was you who conjured him up. You told me a story, remember: whoosh, there he goes, Peter, armed only with his Penguin Book of Romantic Verse. He escapes from the Gestapo and wins the Military Cross.’

  At last, a smile. ‘A story,’ he said. ‘To amuse you. I don’t think you’ll find he’ll turn out to be The One. It’ll turn out to be one of the Key Players – someone you already know.’

  * * * * *

  ‘I think you’ve found him,’ said my mother (this would have been during one of our last phone-calls).

  ‘Do you think so? Do you really think it might be him?’

  ‘Yes, he sounds just like your father to me.’

  ‘Ah, but he’s got the same birthday as me – astrologically-speaking. He had the Sun in exactly the same degree of Aries.’

  ‘Well, there you are then: you and your father all rolled into one, a poet and a gambler. You need look no further.’

  ‘Now, Mum, you know very well that I’m like you in many ways. You’re a Romantic re
ally, and so am I. And I’m becoming organised. I’m writing everything down now, when I make a find. I’ve even started a new filing system.’

  ‘I’ll believe that when I see it.’

  ‘All right then, I’ll bring you my files next time I come.’

  ‘I’d rather you brought me your story. I want to see you finish something. And now you’ve got this Peter chap and you know it’s your father, you’ve got no excuse!’

  ‘I will finish it,’ I said. ‘I will. Oh, I do wish you could show some faith in me. I’m your daughter too, not just Dad’s and I love you as much as I ever loved him - only differently. I have enormous respect for you!’

  She softened. ‘You are yourself, Gwendolen, always have been. And a very loving person really. If I’ve been critical, then I’m sorry. But if I have, it’s only because I know what you can do.’

  She died on November 23rd, very quickly, in the small hours of the morning. She didn’t press her buzzer. She was ready for the off. Uranus returned to its natal place. Bill came round. Mum went out.

  It was Eleanor who woke before the telephone rang and called out her name: Eleanor who wrote the words for her inscription: ‘Marigolds and Daisies Forever in Your Heart.’

  ‘The dawn of life awoken, a tiny little seed; forever growing; nothing to need.’

  Eleanor, the poet: my mother’s dream: her Peter.

  Chiron

  Although I had promised my mother that I would finish Dorothy’s story, after her death I put my research on hold: I was too unhappy to write and too busy sorting through her effects. We spent Christmas with Bill’s sisters in Yorkshire and the New Year with my brother; then there was work to be done on the house, then Spring Cleaning. I hadn’t forgotten, but my plan was to take a year out from teaching and get on with it then. Dorothy, however, didn’t seem too keen on this schedule, or so it appeared, for towards the end of the Summer Term: I received another prompt; this time loud and clear.

  It happened in this way.

  I was coming to the end of a typical teaching day when I had to cover a Drama lesson for an absent colleague: not a prospect I relished, Year 8 Drama last thing in the afternoon. Wasn’t it just my luck, I thought, to get a cover in my last free lesson of the year; and I trudged over to the Drama Studio after picking up a book from the library, feeling very hard done by and in no mood for anything theatrical.

  Fortunately, work had been set. I quickly scanned the instructions, silenced the class and told them what they had to do. Their task was to ‘Create a Character,’ and this character had to have some kind of quirk. Fair enough, I thought. I could probably cope with that. So, after explaining what a quirk was, I sent them off to get on with it, and sat down in a far corner to read; calling them back into the circle towards the end of the lesson so they could introduce their characters to their peers.

  All went smoothly. And, predictably enough, their characters all had trendy modern names, mainly after celebrities; worked in some glamorous occupation, and adopted various quirky modern habits none of which I can recall. Except for one.

  A girl stood up. I can see her now: confident and clear-eyed; fair-haired, pretty. She looked directly at me and said: ‘My character’s named Dorothy. She’s forty-five and a housewife and her quirk is cleaning.’

  A jolt – something electric – went straight through me.

  ‘What?’ I stammered. ‘What do you mean, cleaning, that’s not a quirk.’

  ‘Yes it is.’

  ‘But everybody cleans.’

  ‘Her quirk is cleaning,’ she repeated firmly.

  ‘Do you mean she had some sort of obsession with cleaning? Some kind of compulsion, like people who keep washing their hands or checking the plugs?’

  ‘That’s right,’ she replied, and sat back down. She’d had enough, but I persisted: ‘It’s rather an old-fashioned name, isn’t it, Dorothy? Is it a family name?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I was just wondering where you got the name from.’

  She shrugged. ‘It just came.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, exchanging a look half way between pity and bemusement with her neighbour.

  By now, the class were becoming restless so I quickly moved them on, but I was badly shaken, I can tell you. I just wanted the lesson to end so that I could get home as quickly as possible and lie down. This was too much, even for me; and, for a while, I wandered around the car park in a complete daze. I felt as though I were walking on a bouncy castle, or a carpet which had captured a pocket of air, and I’ve got no idea how I managed to drive home. But I do remember - very clearly - that it was only after I had managed to calm down and went to draw the chart for this ‘event’ that I noticed the date: Wednesday, July 11th 2001. It was Dorothy’s anniversary - and I had forgotten.

  ‘A coincidence,’ said Bill over dinner. ‘A disturbing one, I’ll grant you, but a coincidence nonetheless. Or there is bound to be a rational explanation.’

  Something in his tone of voice annoyed me and I snapped back. ‘Why? Why do we always have to a rational explanation? Why can’t we have an irrational one – for once?’

  ‘Because that wouldn’t be an explanation,’ he replied, dipping a chunk of bread in the left-over pasta sauce. ‘Do you want to look at this – or not?’

  ‘Yes, all right then.’

  ‘Very well. The most likely explanation is that you will have met this class before and forgotten. After all, you’ve only got to meet someone once and you’re telling them all about Dorothy and your research. I’m amazed, actually, that she doesn’t get more visitors. Then again, the girl could just as easily have overheard you telling someone else.’

  ‘And remembered the details?’ I put in. ‘She got her name, age, occupation – and all on the anniversary of Dorothy’s death. Oh, I could have covered the class before and forgotten, that’s certainly possible, but do you really think the average thirteen year old pays any attention whatsoever to teachers in cover lessons because I don’t.’

  ‘But you are hardly the average teacher as you know.’

  ‘Yes, we’re talking here about the average thirteen year old. They’ve got better things to do with their time than memorise details of teacher’s conversations; or their research projects, for that matter.’

  He shrugged, ‘I still think she was winding you up. Kids do that. I used to wind my teachers up, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t, actually. I was very well behaved as a child on the whole. Oh, I used to argue, but I would come straight out with it. I was never a winder-upper. But never mind me, Bill. There was nothing in this girl’s manner to suggest a wind up. She was very direct. If anything she seemed irritated and didn’t like me bothering her. She’d done the work, she gave straight answers - and there I was bothering her with a lot of silly questions. Her whole manner seemed to say: ‘Get a life, Miss.’ No, I’ve been teaching twenty years, I know a wind up when I see one.’

  ‘In that case, what we are looking at is simply coincidence. You’re especially alert to these, as we know. You pick up on things other people would ignore because that’s what you’re like, you set these things up.’

  ‘Oh, I set it up did I, for my colleague to be absent? Not only that, I set the work he left. I then set it up to give myself the Drama Cover. What a helpful little History teacher I am. Well, if I’m setting cover these days, perhaps I should ask them to pay me for it. That’d go down well on Top Corridor!’

  ‘You know very well that I did not mean you set the lesson, although I am sure you would rather believe it was all Discarnate Dorothy’s doing. That cannot have happened. What does happen is that you set it up for us to have these arguments. You ask me for explanations, which you don’t really want and then you argue. You’re not interested in what I think.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ I replied. ‘I’m always interested in other viewpoints.’

  ‘But you’ve already decided that you think.’

  ‘No, I h
aven’t. If I’d already decided, I wouldn’t get into a flap when these things happen. I’m just trying to work things out.’

  ‘All right,’ he said, pushing away his plate and reaching for his cigarettes. ‘You’re looking for explanations, you say. Well, there are explanations outside the Medieval Mystical World View. At my end, you ask for these but don’t listen. You ask me for explanations then tell me I’m wrong.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘Well, you tell me I’m wrong.’

  He inhaled sharply. ‘I do not. I do not say, ‘you are wrong,’ which is what you do all the time.’

  ‘Well, I do think you’re wrong to say that there is no God; and this is all there is to it; this life. So you’re right. I do think you’re wrong about that. But perhaps you can understand how, when I hear you tell me, ‘that cannot have happened,’ I hear you telling me I’m wrong.’

  ‘No, that’s not what I’m saying. That is not what I mean.’

  ‘But you think I am wrong.’

  ‘I think you are mistaken – it’s not the same thing.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, Bill, but it sounds the same to me.’

  ‘Because you don’t listen. I tell you; you’re not, actually, interested in what I think.’

  ‘I’m not interested in thinking like you. I am interested in what you think because I’m interested in you as a person. I’m interested in your story. I’m just not interested in adopting your philosophy - or anyone else’s. As for my own, I know there’s more to life than meets the eye, I just haven’t sorted it out yet. I’m still working on it.’

  ‘You’re working on the details but you have already decided on the bigger picture.’