Miss Mary's Book of Dreams

by Sophie Nicholls

  ‘OK.’ Florence held up a hand. ‘What texts? What did they say?’

  ‘Well, nothing much. I mean, she was flirting with him. I’m sure of it. But then when I looked again he’d deleted them.’

  ‘What did they say exactly?’

  ‘Oh, just stuff about how she liked his . . . don’t laugh, his haircut. But it was the way she’d written it. You know. Kiss, kiss, kiss.’

  Florence scowled into her wine glass. ‘That’s out of order. Bitch.’

  Ella couldn’t help smiling. ‘Yeah. I know. But I shouldn’t even have been looking, should I, really . . .’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Florence rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t you think I have a sneaky look at Steve’s phone from time to time? He’s away so much. I have to keep an eye on him. Make sure he’s not getting up to anything.’

  ‘Really?’ Ella tried to keep her face neutral.

  ‘Yes.’ Florence snorted. ‘You’re such a sweetheart, El. But, you know, show me a woman who doesn’t. I mean they’re all bastards, really, aren’t they? Any opportunity . . .’

  ‘You think?’ Ella felt that stabbing sensation in her stomach again. ‘God. I’m just an idiot, Flo, aren’t I? I don’t have a clue. And the worst thing is that I can’t shake this feeling that he’s somewhere else, that it’s too late. That I’ve already lost him.’ Ella brushed a tear from her cheek with the sleeve of her sweater. ‘Sorry. It’s just . . .’

  Florence was already kneeling on the rug in front of Ella, taking her hand in hers. ‘Now you listen to me, you silly thing,’ she said, with mock severity. ‘This is just you doing that thing you do. Convincing yourself of stuff that isn’t true. Like that time you just knew that your book was going to be a total flop because you’d had a dream about it. Remember? You know, the book that became a runaway bestseller and bought you and Billy the flat?’

  ‘Oh, that was different, Flo.’

  ‘Was it? Was it really? And what about the time those people from the council came to survey the courtyard and you were adamant – absolutely adamant – that you were going to lose the lease to the shop. Because you had a feeling about it . . .’ She squeezed Ella’s hand. ‘You’ve got to admit, El. You do tend to imagine the worst. You know you do.’

  Ella frowned. She looked down at her feet and wiggled her bare toes deeper into the pile of Flo’s rug.

  ‘It seems like every time I come in the room, he’s whispering into his phone,’ she said. It seemed stupid, a silly little detail when she said it out loud. How could she tell Florence about the Signals or about what she’d tasted in the bloody mushrooms? Florence would think that she’d finally flipped. Gone completely off her trolley. And maybe she had? She didn’t know what to believe anymore. She shrugged. ‘It’s just an instinct. I know it. Something isn’t right.’

  Florence smiled and sat back on her heels. ‘Maybe it isn’t quite right. But that doesn’t mean that it’s all ruined. I mean, OK. Most men are pretty stupid, and normally I’d be the first to agree with you that it only takes some silly woman to come along and flatter their ego at a moment when they’re feeling a bit lost, a bit underappreciated.’ She snorted. ‘But Billy? He’s not like that. He’s just not. He’s smarter than that, El. He’s –’

  ‘OK, OK. You’re beginning to sound like Mum now.’ Ella pulled her hand from Florence’s grip. ‘The bloody Billy Fan Club. I mean that’s part of it, isn’t it? What the hell is he doing with grumpy old me, anyway?’

  ‘Oh. My. God.’ Florence frowned. ‘We really are down on ourselves right now, aren’t we? Look. I’m not saying there’s nothing wrong between you two, El.’ She made little circles in the air with her glass. ‘I’m just saying . . . Well, actually, I don’t know what I’m saying, really. I’ve had too much wine. But don’t convince yourself of anything just yet. Take things with a pinch of salt. Look at the bigger picture and . . . and other assorted clichés. OK?’

  Despite herself, Ella smiled. ‘I do really want to believe you –’

  ‘Well, if you can convince yourself of anything, you may as well choose the good stuff.’ Florence raised her glass again. ‘And that particular little gem is brought to you courtesy of four years of cognitive behavioural therapy.’ She winked. ‘I’ve got plenty more where that came from, too.’ She waved the wine bottle. ‘Another glass?’

  14

  To let go of great sadness: In times of heavy sorrow, collect a dish of rainwater. Cry into the dish for as long as you have tears. When your tears are all finished, take the water and use it to nurture the plants in your garden. As you water them, tell the plants all that you wish to let go of and your most secret desires for the future.

  – Miss Mary’s Book of Dreams

  Bryony looked up through the glistening branches. It had stopped raining. The earth steamed gently under her feet but the sky was clear and bright above her head and punched through with brilliant stars.

  Somewhere behind her she could hear someone squelching through wet leaves. She turned.

  ‘Ella,’ she called softly, raising her hand in a wave, but Ella walked on, through the half-dark, between the trees.

  Bryony realised that she couldn’t see anything. She held her hands out in front of her, clawing at the air. It reminded Bryony of one of those blindfolded games from children’s parties. What was it they’d called it? Sardines? Blindman’s Buff?

  Then another figure stepped out from between the trees, a tall, gangly young man with a mass of damp curls that stuck out all around his head. Could this be Billy? Somehow, she knew that it must be. He was looking away from Ella, his face preoccupied. He crouched down to examine something in the roots of a tree.

  Look! she wanted to shout. Open your eyes. Really look at her, before it’s too late. She’s lost. Don’t you see? But when her mouth opened, she found that she couldn’t make a sound.

  She tried to lift her arm. She wanted to wave at him or perhaps scoop up a small stone and throw it or snap a twig from the branch above her head, anything to get his attention. But she found that her arms were too heavy. They hung useless at her sides.

  There was a rustling in the branches and, as she looked up, she felt the cool night air shift against her cheek. It was the bird again. Not the angel bird. No, this one was red and green. An exotic-looking creature. Bigger than a hummingbird, with a tufted head and quick, inquisitive eyes.

  The bird perched in the branches, fanning out its long green tail feathers, and began to preen itself. Its beak moved through the tufted crest of feathers on its head, the emerald feathers on its wings and the red breast feathers that flickered like tiny flames. Then slowly, deliberately, it turned to her, its black eyes shining, as if registering her presence for the first time. The beak opened and a voice came out, a soft, deep human voice that made her spine tingle.

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you, Bryony? It’s time. It’s time to WAKE UP!’

  That voice. It cut through the dark, making her hands shake, no matter how hard she tried to hold them to her sides.

  Then, with no warning, the bird flew at her, so that she had to put up her hands to defend herself. She watched through her parted fingers as it hovered above her head, its tail feathers bright against the black sky. And then the feathers burst into flame, the bird flaring and hissing like a red and green firework, its tail a comet of fire.

  ‘Wake up, Bryony. Wake up, for God’s sake . . .’

  Ed was shaking her shoulder roughly. His face was very close so that she could see the bloodshot whites of his eyes.

  ‘WAKE UP, Bry. It’s just a dream. You’re having one of your night terrors, love.’

  Bryony opened her mouth and closed it again. She tasted smoke and, just beneath that, something else, something green and fresh and fragrant.

  She could still hear that voice, coming out of the bird’s open beak, reaching through the night, reaching down deep inside her.

  Yes, she thought. Time to wake up. She threw off the
duvet and stretched her legs experimentally. She felt a surge of energy travel from her toes to the base of her spine.

  ‘It’s OK, Ed. I’m perfectly fine,’ she said, turning to him and smiling. And the funny thing was, Bryony thought, as she turned the dream images over in her mind, that she really was OK. For the first time in what felt like a very long time, she was wide awake. And she was fine.

  And now she knew what she had to do. Somehow, she had to get Ella and Billy to Miss Mary’s house.

  *

  ‘Are we nearly there, Daddy?’

  Grace kicked her legs and sighed.

  Ella reached over and stroked her cheek. ‘It’s OK, poppet. Not long now.’ Grace hated being confined to her car seat. And these country roads seemed to take every twist and turn possible as they climbed up through the moors. Ella couldn’t quite believe that she’d agreed to this stupid outing. But Billy had been so excited, like a child looking forward to Christmas. And Bryony had been so insistent. Ella hadn’t wanted to disappoint either of them.

  They’d passed the last village about ten minutes ago and there was nothing to see now except bare hills and gorse. The odd rocky outcrop pushed its way up through the bracken and the trees were low and stunted.

  ‘My goodness. It must be bleak out here in the winter,’ Ella said.

  ‘That’s the longest three miles I’ve ever driven.’ Billy shook his head. ‘It must be round here somewhere.’

  ‘There,’ said Bryony, pointing out of the window. ‘Just down there.’ Ella could hear the excitement in her voice. ‘That must be it, don’t you think?’

  Billy pulled over, letting the engine run. Ella leaned forward, peering through the bare hedgerows to where the road bent back on itself and dropped down beside a little stream. There was some kind of building down there. She could just make out the edge of a roof, something that might be a chimney.

  ‘Are we here?’ Grace clapped her hands. ‘Can I have a biscuit?’

  ‘Could be,’ said Billy. ‘Let’s take a look.’

  From the back seat, Ella watched Bryony button her coat and pull on her hat in readiness. She looked happier today. There were high spots of colour in her usually pale cheeks.

  She thought of how, if Mamma was here, she’d take Bryony under her wing, seduce her with dresses in bright jewel colours, introduce her to French perfume and beautiful shoes. She’d find a special word for her and sew it into a secret seam: glimmer or unravel or sparkle or believe. Or perhaps she’d use the language of herbs and flowers. There was something about Bryony that seemed to inspire that.

  She thought again about how they really didn’t know much about Bryony at all. And yet, here they all were, driving her around the most isolated parts of the Yorkshire countryside in search of a seventeenth-century ghost.

  As they dropped down into the fold of the hill, a low stone cottage swung into view. It nestled under a cluster of gnarled apple trees. Ella could see that it was derelict. There were holes in the roof and part of the wall had crumbled into the garden.

  Bryony opened the car door and a blast of cold air hit them.

  ‘Yes, we’re here,’ she said.

  *

  As she walked up the path, Bryony saw the blank holes where the cottage windows should be. They stared back at her, giving away nothing.

  She turned to see if they were following her. Ella was looking doubtful, clutching Grace’s hand.

  ‘Be careful,’ she called. ‘It might not be safe.’

  As Bryony turned back, she imagined that she saw, just for a moment, a flicker of something at the window. The head and shoulders of a woman wrapped in a red woollen shawl, a white face, a tangle of black hair hanging to her shoulders.

  She put her hand on the front door. The rotten wood yielded easily to her touch. It swung wide, revealing a stone-flagged floor with weeds growing up between the cracks and one small room, with a large fireplace still intact.

  She took a step forwards.

  There was a clatter as a bird flew up to the ceiling, its wings beating against the beams. A single black feather floated down in front of her face. There was a hole in the roof, so big that she could see the clouds passing overhead.

  She went back out, calling up to where Ella, Billy and Grace still stood huddled on the roadside.

  ‘I think it’s OK,’ she said.

  ‘Do be careful. Please.’ Ella frowned. The wind snatched at her words.

  ‘That roof looks as if it could go at any moment,’ Billy said. ‘We’ll go round to the garden.’

  Bryony ducked back through the little doorway and into the kitchen. She crouched and looked at the fireplace, which was still full of ashes. She could imagine a rocking chair drawn up to the fire, a pot hanging from the iron pole.

  Outside, she could hear Grace running around in the garden. ‘Mummy, Daddy. The wind’s blowing me over,’ she shouted.

  Bryony tried to clear her mind. From her bag, she drew the red, hardback book, her copy of Miss Mary’s Book of Dreams.

  She leafed through to find the page, the exercise that she’d decided to practise first. It was a simple ‘tuning in’ exercise – what Miss Mary called the ‘dream threshold’. Her instructions were simple:

  Choose a threshold space and lie down with eyes closed. Some thresholds are more powerful than others. Doors and windows, natural places under the sky, a place where many have walked before or where the living and the dead cross over, at the foot of hills or near water, all these are places of great magic.

  Bryony looked at the empty windows. She stood in the fireplace and craned her neck to look up at the blackened chimney.

  The mouth and lips are a threshold of the body, between thought and speech. The eyes are a threshold between seeing and divining what is seen. To practise opening the thresholds, you must let your mind be open. You must hold a space for the waking dream, the messages from the deepest self within you – the Divine – to take shape. Your task is not to examine but to be the vessel for receiving these messages. You must yourself become the threshold . . .

  She stepped through the empty lintel where the back door would once have hung.

  ‘Grace,’ she called. ‘Would you like to help me with something?’

  *

  Ella watched Grace trying to lie as still as she could. Bryony lay next to her in the grass, her legs sticking out comically from the bottom of her coat.

  Miss Mary’s book lay open between them, the page weighted with a windfall apple.

  ‘Keep still, darling,’ Ella whispered.

  ‘My legs keep moving themselves, Mummy,’ Grace said. ‘I can’t help it.’

  Ella felt Billy behind her, his arms fastening around her middle, lifting her half off her feet.

  ‘Stop it.’ She batted him away, nodding in Bryony’s direction.

  ‘Really?’ Billy pretended to look hurt. Things had been better between them this last week. Despite her fears. Despite those texts. Maybe Florence had been right, after all. Maybe it really had been her overactive imagination. ‘What do you think she’s doing?’ he said, watching Bryony, stretched out in the grass.

  Ella shook her head. ‘Trying out one of Miss Mary’s exercises, I think.’

  Billy’s mouth tickled her ear. ‘You were right. I think Bryony’s a bit mad, isn’t she?’

  Ella wriggled her shoulders. ‘I prefer to say eccentric. And also, let’s just say that I rather like eccentric people.’

  ‘I knew it.’ Billy laughed softly to himself. ‘I knew you’d end up getting drawn in.’

  Ella punched him on the arm. ‘It was your idea.’

  ‘True.’ He stood behind her, pushing his hands into her jeans pockets. ‘But I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist.’

  *

  Bryony tried to still her mind. She was vaguely aware of Grace, shifting next to her, muttering softly to herself. But at the same time, she felt as if she was beginning to drift further and further out, warm waves of pleasure flowing down through h
er arms and legs and into her toes.

  She watched the clouds drifting above the apple trees. The air seemed to lift somehow, blue and bright and wide.

  She gazed up through the thick fringe of branches, still heavy with apples and tasselled with fading leaves. Somewhere at the edge of her vision, a pigeon flashed its white wings.

  She heard Miss Mary’s instructions in her head: Make a tunnel of your mind. Tune in, as if you were listening to far-off music . . .

  But Bryony knew now that it wasn’t closer in that she needed to go but wider, out into the blue air. She let her eyes close and her body settle further into the damp grass, her arms spread at her sides. She felt the prickle of the grass on the backs of her hands and she could almost imagine the expanse of earth beneath her, a great mass of warm darkness, moving barely perceptibly between her shoulder blades. She let her mind move upwards with the soft wind that blew through the apple trees, feeling little eddies of green and silver stroke her cheeks.

  When she opened her eyes, it was with that part inside her that looked and watched and waited. And what she saw made her go cold and shaky all over.

  No, she said to herself. No. Not him.

  It was the angel again, the one who always seemed to manage to find her when she was feeling the slightest bit wobbly. He was sitting swinging his legs in the lowest branches of the tree. His wings were folded neatly behind him and he was sinking his teeth into an apple.

  ‘Bit sour,’ he said, his face wrinkling. ‘Not really eaters, are they? I’ve tasted better.’

  ‘Go away,’ Bryony whispered. ‘I don’t like you. You’ve got no business here.’

  Faintly, from far off, she heard another voice, like the crackle of dry leaves: Make a tunnel of your mind. You must become the vessel . . . Do not be afraid . . .

  But this time it wasn’t fear that Bryony was feeling. It was anger. She felt her body tighten and the anger ripple through her neck and arms in hot red waves.