by Liz Williams
“He’s coming back for the funeral, though, is he?”
“Yes. The play will be over by then – he’s flying back as soon as the run ends, he said, and that’s very soon, it might even be tonight, I can’t remember. It’s sort of worked out because they’re going to have to do an autopsy on poor old Harold, even though it’s pretty clear it was heart. But Julian was just keen to get the books out of the way first, and do a full inventory, and then they can see what’s what in the rest of the house. Honestly, Bee, you didn’t see it but the man must have lived like a vole – the cottage was a warren of books, with little tunnels between them.”
“I knew he was a bit –”
“Bonkers, Julian said. I didn’t know him very well, even if he was a cousin. He kept himself to himself. Probably couldn’t get out of the front door.”
“So did Ward know his uncle all that well?”
“I don’t really know. That side of Richard’s family’s always been a bit off with one another, as far as I can see. I lost track of who was not speaking to whom ages ago and, anyway, it kept changing. In the meantime, we’ve got to cope with the books. I’m starting to feel a bit sorry I’ve dragged you into this, to be honest. I didn’t realise there were so many.”
“Well, you are paying me,” Bee said mildly. “Or Julian is, to be accurate. And I don’t mind. I am a trained librarian, after all. A book whisperer.”
“While you’re whispering to the books,” Caro said, “I’ll bring you some tea. And cake. This is a job that needs cake.” But then she put her head back around the door. “Oh. By the way, I had a word with this chap Tam Stare about your car – he knows all the scrap people. He says he’ll pop over in the next day or so and pick it up. Is that okay?”
“Yes, fine. It’s not worth repairing, the garage said, and I’ve still got the Landrover. And thank you. I’d rather deal with someone recommended by a friend.”
“I don’t know how reliable he is, to be honest. He seems all right. His sister’s a friend of Ben’s. She’s a model – a stunning girl, actually.”
“That’s nice,” Bee said, thinking little of it.
Left alone with the boxes, she went to the faux-mullioned window of the turret room and looked out. Behind the house, across the beds of lavender and box, the hillside was a sudden startling green in a shaft of sunlight. A white horse stood by a stand of bronzing beech and as Bee watched, she kicked up her heels in a flurry and galloped across the field, a flying heraldic form. Cloud Chaser, Richard’s prize winning racehorse, enjoying her moment of freedom before the jumps season began later in the month. Bee was reminded of the moonhorse and smiled, imagining Cloud Chaser racing up into the sky, following her name. She supposed that the mare would be taken up to Cheltenham: cream of the jumps tracks and National Hunt racing, and Cloud Chaser had won a handful of races last year. A lot of money for the yard. Caro’s daughter Laura would be up on the hill with her, keeping a close eye on the rising star. Meanwhile, Bee herself had a job to do. She opened a box at random, wondering what she would find. Julian’s uncle’s library had been, to say the least, eclectic. She did not know whether to expect Victorian fairy stories, birds of the British Isles, a history of the Great Game or the works of Aleister Crowley.
And in fact, the box contained none of these: they were all on the subject of gardening. Bee sat down on the floor, and began to sort through the box as the sky darkened and the rain, once more, began to patter against the leaded windows of the turret.
Serena
Serena walked quickly through mist, having coming up out of the relative warmth of the Underground. Outside, Camden was a roar of noise: taxis hurtling past, a man shouting, incoherent. Serena ignored it all, dodged through traffic, headed north towards the Lock. It was already close to half past ten and people were streaming in the opposite direction, making for the Tube, but Serena’s night was just beginning. A school night, too: she would be working tomorrow. She felt a little guilty, but only a little.
Ben’s band, Coldwar, were playing in a club that had once been a warehouse, an arch under the Lock. It was typical North London: grimy, reached by an uneven alley of half-cobbled pavement, the stone of the arch black against the dirty orange sky. Serena half looked up for the moon, then decided she didn’t want to know. She could feel it, however, very faint in the heavens, a bright and easterly eye.
The bouncers, both young and black, heads shaved with fashionable patterns, recognised her and smiled. She smiled back. Inside, it was stuffy and dark. A band Serena did not recognise was doing a sound check on the narrow stage. She slipped through the crowd – too many people, too much noise already, and she longed for the quietness and peace of the studio. She made her way to the back of the stage, through a heavy black curtain that smelled of age and mould.
Two of Ben’s band were there already: the bass player, Mont, and Seelie, who played fiddle and flute and who was thin and blonde like Serena, but ten years younger. They got on well; Serena liked Seelie’s vagueness, her unforced ability to be kind. And she liked her clothes: a shredded lacy vest with ragged Victorian sleeves and PVC jeans as black and shiny as a sealion’s skin.
“Ben’s gone to get some cigs,” Seelie said now. “Said he’d be back in a bit.”
“Okay,” said Serena. She wandered into the empty dressing room, found a bottle of white wine and poured some of it into a plastic cup. Sipping, she went back to the main club to a squeal of sound. She didn’t want to get in the way. But halfway down the room she ran into Ben himself.
He smelled of night and rain and tobacco. He had a pint glass in one hand. “Hey!” His long face lit up. He swept Serena into a one-armed embrace against his donkey jacket and kissed her. His brown curls were starred with water.
“You’re all wet,” Serena said. She shook herself like a cat. “It wasn’t raining a minute ago.”
“It’s pissing down outside. I went to get some fags.”
“Seelie said.”
“This lot are on until eleven. We’re next. You all right to hang about out here?”
“I’ve got wine,” Serena said. She liked to see people going about their business. She waved him on and watched until he disappeared through the curtain. Fifteen years and not a lot had moved on, really: she’d first met Ben on a rainy night in a dingy club, him with a guitar in one hand. But then the drinks had been cider and black, snakebite or lager, and the clubs had been in Yeovil or Taunton, not Camden Lock. Ben hadn’t changed much; Serena hoped she had. But it hadn’t been a case of childhood sweethearts. That had come much later.
It felt okay, tonight. Didn’t it? Ben’s recent absences, those had been work. And the other absences, Serena asked herself? Those unanswered texts and messages. Those sudden, uneasy silences, and things not said, hovering like the ghosts of moths around the edges of the room. She had told herself she was just being stupid. Ben had apparently agreed. It’s a bit paranoid for you, isn’t it, Serena? – said with a frown. You’re not normally like this.
“But are we – all right?”
“Yes, of course we are. I’d tell you if something was wrong.”
Along with the faintest edge of male exasperation: the woman is making a fuss again. Serena hated that. It wasn’t about being too cool for school, it was about trust and love. Yet she hadn’t been able to push the feeling, the wrongness, back into the box in her head.
But he was probably right; she was being paranoid. There you are, tonight has proved it. He was fine just now. You need to get over yourself.
She leaned against the bar and sipped her wine, watching people, and making mental notes. The support band came on and fired up into a wall of sound. Serena didn’t mind, once her ears had adjusted to the din. But after a while it got too much and she unpeeled herself from the bar and made her way backstage. Here, the noise was muted but still intense. Blinking, Serena went down the corridor and pushed open the door to the dressing room.
Immediately it was like stepping into a soundless bub
ble, the noise of the stage muted and muffled. Her first thought was that the girl was standing far too close, and that Ben looked far too comfortable with that. He took a quick step back, but the girl remained where she was.
“Hi,” Serena said. The word fell into the room like a stone. She hoped that nothing showed on her face.
“Hi.” The girl uncoiled herself from her perch on the table, which brought her even closer to Ben. Serena saw a pointed white face and a fan of shining black hair. “Aren’t you going to introduce me, Ben?”
Her teeth, Serena thought, were much too small. Her eyes glinted like oil. But her face was as symmetrical as a mask and she was familiar: a model? Serena was sure that she’d seen the girl somewhere before.
“This is Dana Stare,” Ben said. “Dana – my friend Serena.”
Friend. Serena wasn’t going to have the indignity of correcting him. She gave an entirely inauthentic smile, which was mirrored by Dana, and fell back on platitudes.
“Dana. Nice to meet you. How’re you doing?”
“Good,” Dana said, then turned her back and drew a long-fingernailed hand down Ben’s sleeve. “See you later,” she whispered, and glided out through the door.
“Wow,” Serena said. “You couldn’t have a more obvious vamp, could you?”
“Sorry,” Ben said. He had the grace to look slightly abashed.
“Well, whatever.” Serena wasn’t going to start getting into some jealous snit over it after she’d spent a week talking herself down. She told herself she had too much pride. And bands were surrounded by groupies all the time, especially those that were on their way up. She turned away and walked back out into the club, trying to ignore the sudden churn in her stomach.
Stella
Stella hated airports. She loathed the burnished white, the artificial lighting, the no-smell of cleaning fluids. The rush and the strain of the international sausage factory, even in a relatively small airport like Luton. She charged through arrivals, and out into the swimming day. Then the coach into London, the capital emerging and receding through the torrents, and down to Paddington.
When Stella stepped out onto the concourse here, she finally felt able to take a breath. Railway stations weren’t like airports. There was something substantial and dignified about railway stations, especially this one, with its high arched girders and neat rows of platforms. The Exeter train was on time, and she was able to find a seat at the end of the carriage, where she could squash herself in with her book and her iPod and watch the wet countryside roll by. The dreary suburbs of West London first, reminding her of Portobello and Serena, and then Reading, the landscape growing more rural after that. They crossed the placid expanse of the Thames. Stella glimpsed a white chalk horse on a hill. Yellow oak and burnt beech flamed like torches. They came to small towns, then smaller yet, and eventually, an hour and a half after leaving London, the train pulled into Castle Cary, embraced by green fields and a smell of cows. Stella, with some trepidation, crossed the bridge to find her sister Beatrice waiting. They studied each other for a moment, with the row hanging between them like summer thunder, and then it was gone.
“Bee! I didn’t think you’d make it. I was going to wait for the bus.”
Her sister gave her a big, sudden hug. “I’ve got Nell in the car,” she said.
Nell and a spaniel – Nelson.
Stella said, “Ha! Nelson and Nell.”
“It’s gonna be hard to tell us apart,” her cousin said over her shoulder.
“Nell, you look nothing like a spaniel.” Stella shoved her backpack into the boot of the Landrover and clambered into the backseat, shoving over a muddy, feathery dog. Her cousin twisted round so that Stella could see her properly and Stella’s heart twisted with her: the blue eyes were so like her mother’s, and so was her face. And Nell had fair hair, too, almost white, but very long and plaited into two. The schoolgirl style made her look old and young at the same time.
“Hey, Stella. This is a surprise. It’s great to see you.”
“I’d forgotten you were coming,” Stella admitted. She wasn’t sure that she’d even known. She was embarrassed to find that her voice was hoarse, a frog-croak. The shock of Nell’s resemblance to Alys was starting to ebb. “It’s good to see you, too.”
“Bee said you’ve just come back from Ibiza.”
“Yeah. I had some gigs. It went okay. It’s such a change to be back, though. I haven’t seen rain for a week and now –” The landscape was washed out behind the blur of the weather, but as they pulled onto the Glastonbury road, with the Tor a hummock on the horizon, a thin stripe of blue appeared over the hill with its tower.
“I think it’s brightening up,” Bee said, invoking the British mantra. They pulled down the lane, the maze of tracks that led to the house, and Stella felt her heart begin to lump about in her chest. Her throat grew dry. The Landrover scudded over fallen leaves, the deep copper of rain-wet beech mast, as they turned into the gates.
Stella stepped out into silence. After the cacophony of the island, and then the plane, the train, the car, everything seemed far too quiet. A rook cawed once, high up in the beeches. Mooncote sat across the lawn, a ramble of wet plastered walls under the russet tiles. Stella could smell apples and damp earth. There was a tangle of dahlias along the beds that bordered the lawn, their colours drenched out. The blueness was growing over the ridge of hills, but raindrops still spattered her face. She shouldered her bag and hauled it inside to the familiar house, thinking resolutely of laundry, and not of Alys, no longer waiting.
Downstairs, Bee was making lunch. Stella scalded herself to cleanliness in the shower and wrapped herself in a bathrobe; she was in her own old room. The teenage band posters had long since come down, leaving the faint spoor of bluetac on the plaster, but the walls were still a buttery cream between the woodwormy beams. The leaded glass of the windows cast the lawn and the distant hills into a comforting distortion. Stella turned, at a non-footstep, and saw a woman passing by the doorway. She was tall, with a thread of garnets in her hair, and her long gown was the colour of rubies, or perhaps raindark brick. She carried a bristling thistle, held before her in both hands, and she did not look at Stella. A moment later, she was gone, and Stella knew that if she looked out of the door and along the passage, no one would be there.
So they still came. Well, why not? They had not been tied to Grandpa and his astronomical work; they were from a time earlier than that, and though Abraham now lay in the Hornmoon graveyard, just down the lane, the stars still came.
“Why,” Stella said aloud, “Can’t you help me find Mum?” They had asked, but the trees, and the Behenian stars, and other things, too, had been silent. Stella thought she might go down to the church later, all the same. Have a word with the old boy. She’d never seen why death needed to put a stop to conversations.
When Stella, dressed, came downstairs, she found a stranger in the kitchen. Bee was slicing bread and the whole room smelled of it. Nell was arranging plates of ham, cheese, olives. It was all very calm and homely and the stranger wasn’t like that at all; Stella looked at him with interest. He was medium height, thin-faced, young. His hair was black and spiky; his eyes were a pale, fierce blue. He wore a leather jacket and jeans, the same colour as his hair.
“This is Tam Stare,” Bee said, without looking up. “He’s popped over to pick up the car.”
“The car?” Stella said.
Tam Stare gave her a lopsided smile. “Your sister’s old Corsa. Going to the great scrap dealer in the sky.”
“Oh dear.”
“The back end went,” Bee explained. “Whatever that means. It failed its MOT.”
“It’s not a problem to get it up on the truck,” Tam told her. “You should get at least a ton for it.”
“I only paid £250,” Bee said.
“The tyres alone should fetch a few quid. I’ll see you right.”
“You’ll need the log book,” Bee said. “And the keys.” She handed over a folder,
while Stella put the kettle on. Minutes later, the sound of a winch ground in through the open half of the back door. Stella stepped back and trod on a cat.
“Who’s he, then?” she whispered.
“I’ve not met him before. He’s a mate of Jamie Amberley, he was saying, and his sister’s a friend of Ben’s. Deals in scrap. Possibly deals in other substances, as well, if the rumours down the pub are correct.”
At the table, Nell raised her eyebrows.
“Bit worldly for you, Bee,” Stella said, although Sherlock Holmes had been right about the countryside: it was just as criminal as the town and drugs were rife throughout the county.
Her sister laughed. “He’s not any kind of love interest, believe me.”
Stella said, through a mouthful of cheese, “So is anyone, then?”
“Mind your own business.” But Bee smiled, all the same.
After lunch, Stella pulled on wellington boots and went out into the back yard, leaving her sister and cousin to look up train fares on the internet. A slick of oil on the flagstones was the only trace of Bee’s deceased Corsa. Bee would be accompanying Nell up to London; it was, she said, good that Stella had arrived when she did, as she could feed dogs, cats, chickens, ponies, herself. There’d been a vegetable box delivery. There were eggs, bread, honey – if she was still vegetarian, was she? She was.
Stella liked this idea, and of being alone in her childhood home with just the animals. And the Behenian stars, and the ghosts, and whatever else might care to show up. She hunched into her rainslicker, stepping like a child through the puddles which spotted the lane. Above, the chestnuts still carried a few damp flags of leaves. It was no longer raining, but the air was moist and cold, invigorating after the Ibizan heat. Stella listened, but the chestnut trees had nothing to say to her. She stooped, picked up a conker as shiny as a horse’s coat or a polished shoe, and put it in her pocket.
