“Find the music.” Piersʼ voice held such chilling intensity Martin’s eyes flew open, convinced he’d reappeared, but the room was empty, normal in the morning light. He got up on shaky legs and collapsed onto the bed with the information reeling through his head.
Piers had a full name—de Crespigny. Shadow Music was written in some cosmic combination of melody and harmony devised by that madman with the help of his Golden Dawn dabblings. The music had to be performed in its complete form and the missing part was waiting for them somewhere. Piers was using them both, in fact in his words, “controlling” them.
That remark about “she” already being his. Did he mean Mira? Or Nina?
An overwhelming urge rushed through his body like a floodtide. He had to see Nina and reassure himself she was all right. He darted about locking doors, grabbed his wallet and hurried to the ferry wharf where he had to sit cooling his heels for twenty-five minutes until the little boat appeared. By the time he’d walked the blocks to the CD store he’d calmed down enough to laugh at himself but not enough to stop himself going straight upstairs to see her.
Rolly tossed him a smile from behind the counter but Nina was serving someone so he had a chance to observe her before she noticed him. In an embroidered red sleeveless Chinese style blouse with a short slim black skirt, she looked demure, serene and indescribably beautiful as she chatted with the elderly male customer who obviously enjoyed her attention. What a fool he was, rushing so precipitously to save her from nothing.
Nina glanced up and her face broke into a smile of such total delight that his heart glowed with love and pride. How could he doubt her? She didn’t know it yet with all the confusion and emotional chaos but she had fallen for him. All he needed to do was stick by her until she realised.
The customer left and Nina came around the counter. She held Martin’s arm, standing close, smiling up into his eyes.
“Hello. What are you doing here?”
“I had an uncontrollable urge to see you.” He grinned and had to restrain himself from kissing her. Her boss was watching from his office doorway.
“Hang around for thirty minutes and I’ll take lunch,” she whispered. “Meet you outside?”
“Our spot.” Martin smiled—the place on the footpath where she’d met him the first evening. He squeezed her hand and went down the stairs, ready to spend an agreeable half hour browsing in the jazz and blues section. But New Orleans would be the place for that so instead, he went outside and walked to the travel agent a few doors along the street. Fifteen minutes later he came out. The friendly, efficient woman had just punched a gigantic hole in their plans.
At lunch time Nina took him to the post office and collected a passport application form.
“I’ll need photos. Any photo shop will do them.”
“Let’s get some food. I need to talk to you.”
Ten minutes later, armed with sandwiches and drinks, sitting next to Nina on a park bench, he said, “Piers spoke to me again. I asked him some questions.”
“Did you? Did he answer?”
“His name is Piers de Crespigny but he couldn’t say where he was from. It confused him.”
“Piers de Crespigny. Wow,” said Nina. “That sounds French or something, doesn’t it? It suits him.”
“His accent is definitely English. From the south of England I’d say with an overlay of something else. Sounds almost…West Indian.” He frowned. “The name could be Belgian or even Swiss but that doesn’t really mean anything. Depends who his father was.”
“Martin,” Nina interrupted breathlessly. “We know his name. We can find out who he was, is. No—was.”
“You mean birth and death records? You’re right. We have to go to England.”
“Is that why he wants us to go to England?”
“Maybe…but he could tell us those dates. He’s got something else planned far more important. It’s to do with Mira and us and the Shadow Music. He said the music was the key and the link to the universal life force or something. He was adamant that we find the other part. He said…” Martin paused. Should he reiterate his fears to Nina given the effect that had had last time?
“What?”
“That he controlled us.” A compromise half-truth.
“He does,” she said calmly. “Doesn’t he? Listen to us. Look at us. Our whole lives revolve around this thing now. But I don’t mind any more. I’m not frightened. I want to help him. He needs us.”
“Nina, I went to the travel agent while I was waiting for you. There’s no way I can afford to go to the US. It’ll add on thousands of dollars which I just don’t have.”
“But we have to. Piers wants us to.” Her calm shattered in an instant.
“I thought about it and we don’t really need to. We can ring the Post Office from here and ask them. It’s a long shot anyway. I think going back to England is more important.”
The logic, or perhaps the financial implications and the fact he wasn’t pulling the plug completely, drained the fire from her expression. She gave a brief nod.
“Okay. Phone them tonight.”
“I’ll have to check the time there. You could try to find this Yorke person or a relative online,” he said in a further effort to minimise her displeasure.
Nina spent the afternoon, in between serving customers, in a fruitless online search for the right Xavier Yorke. By the end of the day the few replies she’d had to her messages were negative. She returned home despondent but hopeful Martin might have more luck that evening but he said, “It’s the middle of last night there now. I’ll have to call in the morning.”
“Before I go to work,” she said.
“Fine. At least I found the number to call.” He sounded annoyingly defensive. Surely he wanted answers as much she did?
The next morning Nina made tea and brought it to him. Yawning, he dialled the number.
“Put it on speaker,” she said
“Luella speaking. How may I help you?” she asked in a soft melodious voice.
“My name is Martin and I have a friend Nina here, too. We’re calling from Australia and we have you on speaker phone if that’s all right. We’re trying to track down the person who had a specific PO Box.”
“That’s all right, sir. What is the box number and post office, please?”
He read it out. “But it’s about twenty years ago.”
“That post office burned down. It was real bad—someone died in the fire.”
“When exactly? Do you know?”
“It was 1982 on March 5th. I remember ʼcos I knew the man was killed. Used to work there myself but got a transfer three months before. Lucky. The good Lord was watching over me that time. Everything went up in that fire. Folks never got their mail. Birthday cards, money, greetings, thank you’s, invitations. Parcels. Nothing saved. It was real sad.”
“How terrible,” said Martin. “So no records survived either?”
“Not a thing.”
After he’d thanked her and finished the call, he said to Nina, “Do you think we should give this American thing up? I mean you haven’t had any luck online, either.”
She stared at him in disbelief
“Do you?” insisted Martin.
A red, blinding rage frighteningly unfamiliar in its strength and force gathered inside her. The intensity was terrifying, greater than anything she’d experienced before, a gigantic impending explosion fuelled by Piers’ fury. She clenched her teeth, fingers cramped into claws until she forced control and the rage subsided enough for her to speak rationally.
“I feel…that we’ve started this so we should keep on. What’s the point of spending all this money and travelling half way round the world? We can’t give up. We mustn’t.” She glared at him, breathing hard with the effort of stopping herself flying at him with pummelling fists and scratching nails.
“But Nina…” He spoke as if she were a child—an out of control child having a tantrum. “All I’m saying is we forget about tr
ying to track down the part that was sent to New Orleans. It’s a waste of time and energy. Don’t you think?” He sounded so reasonable, so calm while she…she…
“No,” she said in a voice she barely recognised as her own. “If you want to stop, why don’t you destroy the music?”
Martin sat with a face like a stunned mullet. “Destroy it?”
“Yes.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Now’s your chance. Go on. It’s right there in your room. Rip it up. Flush it down the loo. Burn it.” He couldn’t, she knew that as surely as she knew she couldn’t do it either.
Martin’s cheeks turned a dull red, his mouth firmed to a tight line. He went to his room and looked at the suitcase, lying open and half unpacked on the floor. She followed. They’d put the parts in an envelope together with a tape recording of the violin and cello, having debated whether to lug her violin with them and deciding not to burden themselves with the extra awkward baggage. As Martin pointed out they could always borrow a violin from one of his musician friends in England if necessary.
If he destroyed the music now that would be the end of it forever. There would be nothing keeping them together.
He squatted down and pulled the envelope out of the pocket inside the lid of the suitcase. His expression changed, softened as if a sudden reluctance to bother going on with the argument overcame him. She knew he hated fighting. She knew she’d won.
He said, “We won’t find Xavier Yorke, I’m positive. The man’s either dead or untraceable and who knows where that envelope ended up? We have to go to England.”
He pushed the envelope back into the bag. Nina smiled. The rage settled as abruptly as it was born.
Martin, stood up, back to her. “I’m not giving up I just don’t think there’s any point trying to trace the guy.” He turned slowly and held Nina’s hands tightly in his. “We mustn’t ever fight again about this. We have to tell each other everything that happens and stick together. That’s our strength.”
Nina gripped his hands just as tightly. “Yes. No more fighting. I hated that.”
“And tell each other everything?”
“Yes.”
Martin stared into her eyes, then kissed her, hoping and praying but wondering. Was she telling him the truth? Something had just happened but he didn’t know what. That exchange had been more frightening than any of the previous arguments about Piers. This Nina was foreign and totally unnerving, speaking in a way he’d never heard from her before.
His thoughts gathered and focussed, and his breath caught as pieces fell into place. He had heard that tone of voice before but not from Nina. She sounded exactly like Piers when he berated the other musicians. That bastard was consuming her and he wasn’t getting weaker—he was getting stronger.
****
Nina loved travelling. She loved the excitement of the international terminal and boarding the plane in Sydney, the stopover in Singapore and exploring the airport but Martin didn’t. He had the beginnings of a headache, was dead tired and increasingly worried about the responsibility of looking after her. She left him slumped in a seat guarding their carry on bags and went to the bookstore.
On his own, the lunacy and dangers of his actions hadn’t been an issue. Now they were. The rules had changed dramatically since he and Nina had come together. To make things worse, her parents had taken him aside at the family Christmas dinner and told him how much they liked and trusted him. That they’d been initially concerned but now having met him, were quite at ease.
But her father added, in a voice incongruous given his mild-mannered professor appearance and fixing Martin with a steely eye, “If you hurt or abandon my girl, you’ll have to answer to me. And don’t think I won’t find you.”
He was left with no doubts as to where Nina had inherited her determination.
“Here, have two of these,” she said. Martin opened one eye suspiciously. She stood in front of him holding out a sheaf of pills
“What are they?”
“Headache pills.”
“Thanks.” He swallowed two and drank from the bottle of water she offered.
Nina sat down and watched him for a moment after he closed his eyes. She was lucky he’d found her, so lucky she could barely believe it sometimes, but he was taking the responsibility of looking after her far too seriously. That was mainly because Dad had really put the wind up him at Christmas. There was no need for any of them to worry. Piers was here with her. Piers was with her constantly.
After that one extraordinary night when he’d entered her room and her bed she hadn’t meditated again. She wouldn’t be able to keep the truth from Martin if Piers continued to appear to her that way. Instead he spoke to her in her dreams, wooing her, urging her to continue with their plans. She told Martin most of what Piers said. There was no point telling all of it because he’d be hurt and she didn’t want that, and ultimately she couldn’t bring herself to utter the truth out loud. “I’ve fallen in love with a spirit.”
Martin detested Piers and knowing the full extent of her relationship with him would be cataclysmic in terms of her relationship with Martin.
Chapter Ten
Cutting Marsh, September 1892
Ethan called to see Miranda several days after her visit to Maggie Blackstone. She was surprised to see him in the parlour, she’d assumed he was busy entertaining his new American friend in London and far too busy to bother with her.
“I thought you were in town,” she said.
“I was but it’s too noisy and crowded for me. I like the peace of the country.”
Miranda smiled. What did he want? He kept gazing at her as if he’d never seen her before and he was doing those fidgety things with his hands he did when he was nervous.
“Are you engaged to Miss McCusker?” she asked.
“No,” Ethan blurted. “I love you, Miranda. I always have and I always will. I don’t care what my parents think. I want to marry you. I don’t want to spend my life with anyone else.” He rushed on before she could overcome her astonishment. “We’ve always known we would be wed, haven’t we?” He grabbed her hands in his and gazed earnestly into her face. “You will marry me, won’t you?”
His features were so familiar. She’d loved him for so long but now…She smiled at the irony of it. Time was she’d longed for this moment, had lain awake at night thinking of his words, how she would respond, how his lips would feel on hers. He smiled back, mistaking her silence for an abundance of emotion. Now was her chance. If she was to change her life it would start right here with Ethan. She owed him of all people, the truth about her feelings. He bent forward and kissed her gently then with more passion. His moustache prickled her mouth.
“I love you, Miranda.” He held her tight against his body. Her cheek was pressed against his linen jacket. She could hear his heart beating in her left ear. He smelled of tobacco smoke. “I want to spend my whole life with you.”
“Oh, Ethan.” Several tears escaped and ran down her cheeks. He held her away to lift her chin with his fingers. Guilt and doubt choked the words in her throat.
“No need to cry, my darling.” He laughed. “We’ve a lifetime to be together in. Nothing to be sad about.”
“No.” She managed to turn her lips up in a smile. A lifetime with Ethan? Piers offered eternity. “But Ethan I don’t know whether we can do this, I mean…aren’t you already promised to Miss McCusker?”
“Not officially. I haven’t asked her. It’s more or less assumed.” The way she’d assumed he would marry her? Poor Miss McCusker.
“Won’t your parents be very angry?”
“Maybe at first but they love you Miranda. You know that. And your father is a good friend. They can’t object for long.”
Could he tell? Did her deceit show as a mark on her forehead, a black sign of her evil nature? But was loving Piers evil? How could it be? Was loving two men evil?
She had a decision to make, a choice, and she’d just made it. She wasn’t betrothed when she met Piers.
Now she was an engaged woman she would definitely forgo her trysts. He would soon move on and forget her. A pain sharp as a knife stabbed at her heart. Piers with another girl. Impossible. But she was with another man. But this was Ethan…Piers knew her situation in regard to Ethan and never said a word about it. He wasn’t jealous. Strangely not so. If he truly loved her would he not be eaten with jealousy?
He could have proposed at any time but he didn’t. He offered her a cosmic life together for eternity when she would settle for an earthly one. But he didn’t ask her.
“Let’s tell your father first then drive home to tell mother.” Ethan squeezed her hand.
“Maybe you should have spoken to my father first.”
“He’s expected us to marry for years. He’ll be delighted.”
****
London, 1999
The plane shuddered and twisted as the violent, icy blasts tried to drag it from the sky and unnaturally hasten touchdown. Nina gripped Martin’s hand tightly and held her breath until the thud of wheels on runway jarred the travellers and huge jet engines shrieked in reverse thrust as the pilots slowed the giant plane.
England in January. Wet, freezing, bleak. Nina’s immediate and lasting impression was of smallness. Closed in, cramped, crowded—even the sky seemed smaller although that could have been due to the low grey cloud cover enveloping the city, merging with the rain and exhaust fumes into a dismal smog.
“Remember Bondi,” she said wistfully as they rode in the taxi from the station to Martin’s basement flat.
“I’ll never forget it.” He looked out at the familiar streets and the scurrying pedestrians, heads bowed against the rain, umbrellas bobbing, coats and scarves buttoned and tucked securely.
Martin clenched his fists nervously in his coat pockets. Now they were in his territory Nina would see how he lived in the dreadful, pokey, damp basement flat. After her lovely little house in Balmain she’d hate it and eventually by extension, him. If only he’d been able to keep his previous two bedroom flat. Blame Piers for that, losing his job and his regular income.
He’d called Sven from Sydney to tell him they were returning and to clean the place up, get in some food, wash the sheets, kick out any friends he may have collected in the couple of months Martin had been away. Sven had listened and boomed cheerfully, “Ja, ja, ja. Leave it by me, man. No worries,” which generally was a sign to begin worrying immediately.
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