Comet Weather

by Liz Williams

  “A few years.” On and off, but she wasn’t going to tell Dana that. Other people doubtless would, and probably had.

  “Childhood sweethearts?” Dana smiled her little cat smile. There was a ragged edge of accent under the London speech, Serena thought, but she couldn’t quite place it. Irish? Northumberland? Something of each. “He said he’s known you for years.”

  “Yes, he has.” Childhood sweethearts wasn’t true but she wasn’t going to say that to Dana.

  “That’s really cute.” The Americanism sounded off; it was as though Dana Stare was saying something quite different, beneath the conventional words, just as her accent kept lifting up from the surface. And Serena thought she knew what that subtext was. But she wasn’t going to get her claws out just yet. She said nothing at all, and this seemed to disconcert Dana. She pursed her lips and looked at her boots as she walked.

  “Where are you from?” Serena asked, abruptly. Dana looked surprised by the question.

  “What? Oh, all over the place. My family’s from different parts. My brother’s in Somerset, at the moment.”

  “Really? My sister still lives in Somerset.”

  “I know.” Perhaps Dana felt that more explanation actually was required, because she said, “My brother’s a mate of Jamie’s.”

  “I see. And that’s how you know Ben.”

  “Yeah. Tam – my brother – has known Jamie for a while. I met Ben at Jamie’s dad’s. And Laura and I are really close. She’s such a sweetie.”

  “Laura’s lovely. Amberley’s not very far from us.”

  “I know,” Dana said, again. Serena was starting to feel out of her depth – it was like having a stalker, but she could hardly accuse Dana of that just because she knew the same people. She felt an unpleasant tugging at her gut, a sinking feeling, and recognised it as the sensation of boundaries being impinged. They were nearly at the Tube. She said,

  “So what do you do?”

  “I do things for people.”

  What did that mean? Care work? PR? Prostitution?

  “And I do a bit of modelling.”

  “Catwalk?”

  “Some. Mainly magazines.”

  “I’m surprised I haven’t heard of you.”

  “I’m not one of the big names,” Dana said, and smiled as if something had amused her, rather than with the usual anxiety or sour grapes that Serena had become accustomed to with members of the modelling profession. Maybe Dana was in porn.

  “Well,” Serena said, “Here we are.” She wished her voice didn’t sound so falsely bright. “Nice talking to you. I’m sure we’ll run into one another again.”

  “I’m sure we will,” Dana Stare said.

  Luna

  The interior of the van was very dark and it took Luna a moment to adjust. She stood uncertainly in the doorway, with the brightness of the day closed off behind her.

  “Gran?” Sam’s voice said. His hand was on Moth’s collar. The lurcher whined a greeting. Moth’s long, rat-thin tail began to whip from side to side.

  There was a flicker and a lamp came on. Gradually, Luna saw a divan bed and a small table beside it. The trailer was a modern one, blocky and long, but the windows were covered over with black paper. It stood parked at the end of a field, near a slow-running stream that would, in spring, be thick with watercress. The chalk shoulder of the hill stretched above.

  “Sam, come in. Sit down. Bring your friend with you. And the dog.” The voice was surprisingly strong. Luna groped her way to the divan and perched on the edge of it. She could see Sam’s gran, now, peering out of the shadows. Not all that old, but her face was all bones and hollows, like the hillside, and her skin was white as chalk.

  “Hello, doggy.”

  “His name’s Moth,” Luna said.

  “Yeah, he’s the new rescue – remember I told you, Gran? After Bolt went back in the spring.”

  “I do remember, Sam. What a lovely boy. And what’s your name, lovey?”

  “Luna. Luna Fallow.” Normally, she didn’t give her surname, but now it seemed right and she wondered why.

  “My name is Ver March. I’m Sam’s grandmother, his mother’s mother.”

  “It’s nice to meet you.” Luna, who was reticent rather than shy, felt herself to be shy now and it made her sound gruff and reluctant.

  “Sam,” his grandmother said. “Go outside and do stuff.”

  In the halflight, Luna saw Sam grin. “All right, Gran. I’ll take the dog, shall I? Before that tail knocks something flying.”

  He left, letting in a shaft of thin sun, and closing the door behind him.

  “This must seem a bit strange to you, lovey,” Ver March said. “But I’ve a problem with my eyes at the minute and I can’t see too well in strong light. So I’m living like a mole.”

  “Or an owl,” Luna said.

  “Or an owl, yes. I’m pleased to meet you. Sam told me a bit about you, more than he usually tells me. Not that there have been all that many girls and not many at all whom he’s brought back to meet me.”

  “I think it’s working,” Luna said, hesitant.

  “He’s a good boy. Decent. He’s always been like that, tried to do the right thing. He lost his mother when he was young; it’s not been easy for him.”

  Luna knew better than to ask where Sam’s dad had got to: her own family history was not stellar in that respect.

  “I lost my mother, too,” she said.

  “I know. Sam told me. But she’s not dead.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The cards.” Ver March reached for a battered pack that sat on the table.

  “Ah.” But Luna’s expectations about old gypsy ladies and the Tarot were wrong. The cards that Ver drew out were not the Tarot, or any that she recognised. She looked more closely, seeing a curling vine, a moon, a glowing border.

  “Three of Joys,” the old lady said. “That’s for you. Eventually. Wherever she is, your mum, she isn’t dead.”

  “I’ve never seen those cards before. I do the Tarot myself, a little bit. I’m learning.”

  “It’s a marvellous book. These are older. Not this actual deck: my husband painted these, before he died. But the symbols of these cards are old and they deal with deeper things than even the Tarot does. Wilder things.” She handed over a card. A white fox ran down between beech trees, a chalk hillside behind.

  “Do you – could you use them to see where my mum is?”

  “I did try,” Ver said. “But I’ve not met your mum, you see. So maybe you should draw a card.”

  She fanned out the deck. There were not so many cards in this deck as in the Tarot. Luna pulled one out and looked down at a snow covered landscape. The chalk horse raced silver on the hillside; below, two winding black shapes coiled through the branches of a blackthorn hedge. She could not see, in the dim light of the van, quite what they were. Maybe snakes? She held the card out to Ver March, who looked at it without expression.

  “Rifle through them. Get to know the cards.” Luna did so, but the images seemed to drift and swim, leaving an impression of strong beauty behind, rich as good wine.

  “They’re lovely,” she said at length, inadequately.

  “My husband was a painter by trade.”

  Luna smiled. “Yet you don’t have a painted wagon.”

  “No. We prefer to be anonymous, you see. Not to call too much attention to ourselves.”

  “Sam,” Luna paused, afraid of giving offence, “Sam said you weren’t Romany.”

  “We’re not Rom, no. We’ve always been here. The Rom came later, but we made them welcome. Someone had to.” She reached out again and took something wrapped in a scrap of velvet, handing it to Luna. “Take hold of that and tell me what you see.”

  Luna did so. It was a shard of hollow bone. She curled her hand around it and closed her eyes. The wall of the trailer peeled back behind imagination’s wall. Luna stood looking out onto the chalk hillside. It was covered in snow, like the card, and the Great Bear curv
ed above it, with Arcturus yellow as a buttercup over the white ridge of the hill. One benefit of growing up in an astronomer’s house: you knew your stars. Luna took a step and her boots crunched on ice; she looked back to see a line of beech, and far away, something howled. She dropped the bone in surprise and the landscape vanished. The inside of the wagon felt suddenly stifling and hot. Her head was swimming.

  “Deep breath, lovey,” Ver March said. Slowly, Luna’s vision cleared.

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “Yes, a very long time.”

  “And your –” ‘family’ seemed wrong, “People have been here ever since then?”

  “I knew Sam had been sensible,” Sam’s gran said.

  Bee

  Bee stood on the Embankment, looking up at the Sphinx. The Sphinx, inscrutable, smiled back; its enormous bronze face reminded her, for some reason, of the faces of the Behenian stars.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if you spoke,” said Bee, encouragingly, but the Sphinx remained motionless on its plinth, with the grey oily Thames gliding along behind it.

  Nell and Serena had gone to the British Library: Nell to look up something historical, and Serena to search for a particular volume on Victorian embroidery. Left to her own devices, Bee found herself enjoying the capital. The dark green dress was a reasonable success and her sister had lent her a fifties coat with a collar like moss to go over it rather than her usual Barbour. She felt more presentable than she had done in years, and although she missed Dark, it was good to get away for a few days. She knew she’d be tired of London by the end of the following day, and that her feet would hurt, and that she’d be sick of the deadening smoke-smell of the city. But this morning she’d had breakfast in a patisserie, had spent forty five minutes in a bookshop, and was now talking to a Sphinx: for the moment, Bee Fallow was content.

  And there was lunch on the agenda shortly, but for that, she’d have to make her way back up to Bloomsbury. She turned, leaving the river behind, and headed towards the Tube. But just before she crossed the road, she looked back. The Sphinx was holding a bronze claw to its smiling mouth: hush.

  “They’re going to send the book to Nell,” Serena said. She flopped into a chair opposite her sister. Her fringed shawl sparkled with crystal beads; her brocade coat bloomed with dusk-pink roses. Bee felt a sudden pang at her own sartorial restraint; Serena was, albeit discreetly, turning heads.

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “They said she could collect it from Harvard, from the library. They’ve got some kind of system. Inter-loan thingy. She’s really pleased.”

  “Is she still there?”

  “No, she came down with me. She’s in a second hand bookshop round the corner. Can’t get her out of them. I said I’d meet you, otherwise we’d both have been late.”

  “That was kind,” Bee said.

  “And you? Did you have a good morning?”

  “Yes. By the way, I rang Stella but she didn’t answer the phone. She’ll be all right. Probably wasn’t up.”

  Serena shook her head. “I can’t believe she’s back at the house. You said she just showed up?”

  “Well, she called to say she was on the train. We picked her up.”

  “And how is she? I mean, really?”

  “I don’t know. She seems all right. We haven’t talked about – it.”

  “Did she mention the row?”

  “Not really.”

  “Oh, Bee. I wish she’d apologise.”

  “We’re avoiding the subject. I’ll try and talk to her when I get back. It – well, it did hurt. I did everything I could think of to find Mum.”

  Serena clasped her wrist. “I know you did.”

  Bee felt her eyes begin to sting. “I was on the phone for hours, and I went down to the police station every day – I practically haunted it. But I can’t blame Stella. It’s just been so –”

  “It’s been shit.”

  “And part of it is the gossip. People still go quiet when I walk into the village shop and they give you that look.”

  “Probably think we murdered her and buried her under the patio.”

  “Serena, I’m sure that’s what they do think. Some of them, anyway. I can hear them thinking ‘It’s always the relatives, you know’.”

  “I think that’s usually those awful missing kids cases where the father turns out to have done it.”

  “It’s not everyone. Caro Amberley’s been a star.”

  “Ben’s mum’s always had her feet on the ground. And she was Mum’s best friend, after all.”

  “People think we’re weird, anyway. What with Alys and all her kids with different fathers, out of wedlock – I’m surprised we haven’t featured in a Daily Mail double spread.”

  “We’re too middle class.”

  “And the – other stuff.”

  Serena gave her sister a piercing stare. “Are they – the you know –”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “Good,” Serena said stoutly. “I like them.”

  “I like them, too.”

  “Capella was my favourite, when I was a little girl. That sapphire crown. And she left sprigs of thyme about the place.”

  “Serena, we shouldn’t –”

  “What? No one would know what we were talking about. Or care. You should hear what some of my clients believe. One of them thinks she’s the reincarnation of a Babylonian priestess. Trust me, no one’s going to care about a load of star spirits.”

  “I liked the Pleiades,” Bee said, after a pause.

  “Yes, rock crystal and fennel, so pretty. And there was always one you couldn’t quite see.”

  “There still is.”

  “And the – others.”

  “Stel went down to the church and spoke to Grandpa.”

  “I miss Grandpa. I ought to come home,” Serena said. She hunched into the brocade coat, while the waitress took their order. The café smelled of ginger and aniseed, chilli and soy: warm scents, against the cold.

  “Why not, Serena? You could bring Bella.”

  Serena nodded. “She likes it there, but she’s got stuff this weekend. She’s going to her dad’s. I want to get the collection out of the way.”

  “Are you planning to come back at Christmas? You’re coming back for Apple Day, anyway.”

  “I think so, for Christmas. Ben’s going home. Not that it necessarily means I’ll do the same. Bee, do you know a girl named Dana Stare?”

  “No. I know a bloke called Tam Stare, though. He’s just sorted my dead car out.”

  “He’s a friend of Jamie’s, I gather.”

  “Yes, one of Jamie’s dodgy friends, though.”

  “What sort of dodgy?”

  “Dealing. Not anything hardcore, I don’t think, but all the same... He’s one of those people that people always know, if you know what I mean. Fixers. They meet them down the pub.”

  Serena nodded. “I know a lot of people like that. But you don’t know Dana? The sister?”

  “No, I don’t think so. What’s she like?”

  “Dodgy,” Serena said, with gloom.

  Stella

  The rain had washed out over the Severn Sea when Stella came back down the lane from her second trip to the churchyard. This time, Abraham had proved skittish and elusive, so Stella had decided not to stop at the black marble pyramid and had gone into the church itself instead, since the vicar was just emerging and held the door for her.

  Hornmoon was wreathed with roses. Tudor and stylised, they marched up the white plaster walls in rows, and thence over the roof, occasionally dodging between the beams, where the artist had been obliged to accommodate the uneven surface of the ceiling. All of them were a dull scarlet, with small green leaves. Carol services, Easter and the occasional wedding or funeral had been spent in counting them, but Stella and her sisters had never been able to agree on the exact number.

  The church was supposed to have Templar foundations, but Bee, the historian of the family, was uncert
ain how true this might actually be. It was, however, a most unusual building, and on any given day one might find hushed academics inside it, making notes or undertaking careful illustrations of the roses, the carved wooden cherubs, or the admonitions that ran in a racing cursive script around the walls: Lovest Thou Thy Lord and Praise With A Glad Heart. Recently, a pleasingly large grant had been given to the church for a restoration project: the previous summer had seen a group of historical artists in residence at the vicarage, notable both for their prodigious imbibement at the Hornmoon Arms and their skill in repainting the decorations and restoring them to their original Elizabethan grandeur. Now the roses leaped from the walls like splashes of blood, even in the rainy autumn light, and Stella sat for a while in contemplation of the thoroughly familiar. Someone had made a competent arrangement of white roses and the churchyard’s Japanese anemones in front of the pulpit, and Stella’s gaze rested on this composition with satisfaction. She always felt more aligned to Buddhism than Christianity, but there was something pleasing about the routine patterns of the year, as though they tied her back into time. The last eighteen months, with missing Mum, various men, to-ing and fro-ing from Ibiza and London and Dublin and Amsterdam, the whole manic round of it, made her realise how grateful she was to be islanded here. By tomorrow, she might be glad to have Bee and Nell back – but for now, no.

  She stayed later in the church than she had intended, and by the time she slipped the key into the slate hollow in the porch wall, dusk was blooming over the horizon. There was a clear green strip of sky in the south west, and the hills were black whalebacks of shadow against it. Stella could see a sliver of moon, right on the new, above the hills. It was not on its back, holding the water in, but upright, like a sickle about to cut. The evening star rode near it, sailing through green.

  As Stella walked past the marble pyramid, there was a blue flicker and her grandfather’s voice said inside her mind: “The comet’s coming. Don’t forget, Starry.”

  “A comet? Really?”