by Lisa Tuttle
When Angus came back we began to clear away the dishes and the empty bottles and he said, “We had a lot to drink.”
“Too much,” I agreed. Then, impulsively, “Angus, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t,” he said swiftly. “It’s all right.”
I was on the point of reassuring him but couldn’t, as I understood that I had already left him. I had ended our marriage when I walked into Midhir’s arms.
But as quickly as that insight came it left me. Common sense bustled up importantly. What nonsense. Of course our marriage wasn’t over; of course I hadn’t left Angus. Here we were in our home, about to do the washing-up together, like any other night. Brandy on top of wine and sexual intoxication had made me silly. A kiss was just a kiss, not a binding promise, not an irrevocable step, not the destruction of a marriage, not unless you wanted it to be.
But I did want it to be.
Common sense lay down and died. Love had me in its grip. I’d tried to pretend I didn’t believe in it, that it was just an illusion, that peace and contentment and all sorts of other things were more important, but I’d only managed to stave it off for a few years: this desire, this disease I had in me.
Angus was a good man, and he had been good to me. I didn’t wish him any sorrow. But even if Midhir was mad or a liar, he was the one I wanted, he was the man I’d already gone after in my heart.
I left Angus while he was washing the dishes. He thought I was going to the bathroom, but I went out of the house by the front door, saying nothing, taking nothing with me, not even my handbag or a cardigan against the chill. I didn’t say goodbye or leave a note because I knew this was madness, what I was doing, and if Midhir wasn’t nearby, waiting for me, I would have to go back. Then I could say I’d just been out looking at the moon. I could go on being the wife of Angus and try to forget I’d ever wanted anything else.
I wonder what Etain really wanted, which man she really loved? Perhaps neither. In the story she’s simply dutiful, giving her loyalty to the one who owns her, simply an object, like Helen of Troy, for men to fight over. But what about the real woman, if there ever was one? What about me?
The moon was full and the night clear, so I had no trouble seeing my way. As I reached the bottom of our drive I saw a man waiting on the old stone bridge where the forestry track leading into the hills splits off from the paved road, and my heart and stomach clenched in a way more like fear than joy. I ran to him anyway, as if I had no choice.
We kissed, and I shivered with passion and fear in his arms.
“I thought you’d forgotten me,” he said. “When the magic didn’t work, I thought I’d lost you forever, that you’d been blown too far out of our world ever to return.”
I understood what he meant, because I’d felt it, too. When we’d kissed, it should have happened then: the roof should have opened, and we should have flown away together then, like in the story. But that kind of magic didn’t work in this world.
“Your magic did work,” I said. “Look, here I am.”
“You’ll live with me forever,” he said. “We’ll never grow old. Come.”
“Where are we going?” I looked up and down the dark, empty, tree-lined road. “Where’s your car?”
“We’re going to my palace. Come, it’s not very far.” Holding my hand warmly and tightly in his he led me up the forestry track, deeper into the forest on the side of Sliabh Gaoil, the lovers’ hill.
What did I think, as I went with him?
I thought maybe he’d parked his car out of sight of the house, a little way into the forest. I thought maybe he was taking me to some isolated spot where we could make love — I was eager enough, abandoned enough, to have done it with him right away, in the wet grass, anywhere. I thought maybe he was a fairy prince whose palace looked to ordinary mortal eyes like nothing but a grassy hillock, and when we reached the Sidh Ban Finn it would be transformed — that with my hand in his I would be able to walk through a newly opened door into another world of unimaginable splendor.
I thought that no matter what happened at least I would be with him, and that would be magic enough.
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
Before long we left the road. I remembered a short, stiffish climb from my daytime visit to the mound with Angus; at night, the bracken, brambles, and uneven ground were all far more treacherous, as threatening and mindless as a bad dream. I clung to Midhir, who more than half-carried me over the roughest ground.
Then we stopped. We were on a hillside, in a treeless space where the bracken grew as high as my head. No lights showed in any direction, although I knew we must be less than a mile, as the crow flies, from my own house. I felt my orientation shift until I had no idea where we were, no notion how one bit of this wilderness fit with any other. I looked at the man beside me and knew him even less than I knew this moonlit territory. For a moment I recognized my own insanity in allowing him to take me here, and then I embraced the madness. This was what I wanted, this crazy love, this stranger. I shivered and leaned against him.
“You see it,” he said softly.
I frowned into the darkness, wanting to please him. “What … ?”
“My sidh. The entrance to my world.”
A particular massive darkness detached itself from the general gloom, and I realized it was a standing stone. “This is the Sidh Ban Finn.”
“You can see!” He sounded so joyful I didn’t have the heart to confess I had only guessed. “Oh, my darling, I thought perhaps you’d been away so long, and come so far, I might never get you back. Magic hardly ever works in this dreadful world.”
“I never believed in magic before I met you.”
“Come, let’s not linger out here, while the gates to my country are open.”
I let him lead me forward, his arm around my waist. “Tell me where we’re going … describe it to me. I can’t see very much in the dark.”
“It won’t be dark for long, my love — surely you see the light ahead?”
Did I see a light at the end of a dark tunnel, or was it only imagination, fueled by the desperate need to see something? I decided it didn’t matter. The will to believe would be enough.
I went with my love into the darkness, eyes fixed on the dim light I’d willed into existence. We went into the side of the mound. That I didn’t imagine: there was an opening, an entrance of some kind that had not been there when I’d seen it in daylight with Angus. A door opened for us, and we went through.
For a brief moment I knew I was in another country. I could feel warmer air moving against my face, a spring breeze, scented with apple blossom; and above me an open, starry sky — or were those torches?
I paused to look up and I stumbled — or he did — and his hand slipped away from my waist, and suddenly I was in pitch darkness and alone. Everything changed in an instant. The air was still, close, stale and damp, and smelled strongly of earth. There was not even the hint of a light anywhere, and my lover had gone.
“Midhir — where are you?”
My own voice came back to me, loud and flat, words spoken too loudly in a small enclosure, and as I stretched out my arms to reach for him my fingers touched cold, damp stone.
Where was he? Where was I? Why couldn’t I see? Where was the moon?
Panic threatened and I struggled for control, exploring my surroundings by touch. It didn’t take long. Stone walls perhaps six feet apart on either side, extending maybe ten or twelve in length; a stone ceiling a few inches above my head. I was inside a rectangular chambered cairn, inside the Sidh Ban Finn.
There had been a way in, so there must be a way out. But no matter how I pressed, pulled, and prodded at the stone slabs, I couldn’t find it.
And where was Midhir, who had been beside me until a moment ago?
He had gone into that other country — close at hand, yet closed to me. He must still be beside me, pleading with me to open my eyes and see, casting his useless magical spells.
It was so
dark that it made no difference whether my eyes were open or shut, so I shut them and tried to convince myself that Midhir was standing beside me, that I could feel his lips on mine, and that when I opened my eyes I would see him smiling at me, his handsome face illuminated by the thousand fairy-lights decorating his palace. I had believed enough to come this far; I must be able to push myself further. I concentrated on Midhir and opened my eyes.
Nothing. Blackness, stale air, the approach of a lonely death. The will to believe was not enough. I could not believe in Fairyland, not even to save my own life.
To Midhir this was a fairy palace and the entrance to another world. To me it is a grave. It was always my grave, and now I am in it.
Soul Song
All that summer I listened to Craithe’s last symphony. I’m not a great fan of classical music, and especially not the modern, atonal stuff, but Craithe’s final work was an exception, and I had a soft spot for it that was purely personal. The CD had been a present from an ex-lover who was very knowledgeable about music (unlike me), and the symphony had been playing on his car radio the first night I went home with him; in some way, I felt, the achingly sweet swell of the third movement was a factor in deciding me to spend the night.
But our love affair had ended, leaving me with a few regrets, with memories good and bad, and with Craithe’s last symphony, to which I listened in the long, lonely evenings with a masochistic pleasure.
Because I liked his last symphony so much, I tried his earlier works, too, but I couldn’t like them: they seemed cold, monotonous, inhuman. I could hardly believe they’d been written by the same person. But, as I would readily admit, I knew nothing about music. That I should have set out to make a film about the Scottish composer Edward Craithe might seem unlikely, but the truth is that we don’t always choose our subjects — sometimes they choose us.
After a stint as a researcher with the BBC I’d written a reasonably successful short series about the depiction of drug abuse and drug culture in art and literature down the centuries, and I was trying to figure out what came next. I’d pitched a couple of ideas but hadn’t managed to rouse the enthusiasm of anyone with money.
And then I got the letter from Maggie Price about Flora Abernethy.
Maggie is a social worker in Edinburgh who helped with my research into post-Trainspotting drug culture. We became friendly and kept in touch via e-mail. She was always sending me no-hoper ideas she thought would make brilliant TV, and so far my lack of enthusiasm had not put her off.
Her latest suggestion was for a program about a composer called Flora Abernethy, who supposedly had never been properly valued because she was a woman (Maggie didn’t realize that feminist rediscoveries were way past their sell-by date), and because she’d been mad at one time, but who might actually have been the real composer of Craithe’s last symphony.
Edward Craithe had been Flora Abernethy’s lover. The original score, from 1940 or so, was in her hand, and no drafts or notes for it had ever been found among Craithe’s papers. And of course, as even I knew, it was very different from the style in which he had previously been working. The big mystery about Craithe, and the only fact which I knew about his life, was what had happened to him in 1940. He had disappeared then, and no trace of him had ever been found. Maggie suggested that Craithe’s last symphony had actually been a collaboration between him and Flora Abernethy, but she referred me to an article published in The Feminist Review in 1984 which argued that it was Flora Abernethy’s work alone, written after her abandonment by Craithe, and that it was the refusal by the establishment to accept this and take her seriously which had led both to her mental breakdown and to the effective end of her career.
“Of course, there’s no way of proving authorship, but at least the issue could be raised. She’s a lovely lady, very articulate, I’m sure she’d be great on TV. Her connection with Craithe could be the hook for a fascinating program.”
For once, I agreed with Maggie. I’d been looking for my next project, and now I’d found it. Music, history, a mystery, the hint of scandal: had Craithe been given credit for his girlfriend’s work? Maybe she knew the truth behind his disappearance. From what Maggie said, the old lady was ready to talk; the time was ripe to solve the mystery of Edward Craithe.
*
Maggie thought there was no way of proving authorship, but I believed otherwise. I’d heard of a computer program which could analyze a piece of music and generate more in the same style, and if computer programs could be used to authenticate works believed to be by Shakespeare and other word-mongers, how much more easily would one deal with the more mathematical structures of music!
The London Library listed two biographies of Craithe, one from 1952, the other from 1976. I reserved them both. It seemed strange to me that there had been no new biography in twenty years. Weren’t there others, like me, tempted to solve the mystery of Craithe’s disappearance? Or had it been solved? How to go from egocentric (“What a brilliant idea I’ve had!”) to paranoid (“Everyone else in the world has known for years.”) in five minutes. I got on my bike and went straight to the library before anyone else could steal my books.
The 1976 biography, by Mark R. Thomas, had a section of photographs, as well as footnotes. I looked at the pictures first. Craithe, in a studio shot from 1936, looked smooth and oiled, handsome as a matinée idol. Flora Abernethy had dreamy eyes but a determined jaw. I began to skim-read, with the 1952 biography, by A. D. Wallace, close at hand for the occasional contrast and comparison.
Edward Craithe had been born shortly before the first world war into a middle-class Edinburgh family. They were not especially musical, but there was a piano, and music lessons, for all the children, and when Edward showed an interest in composition it had been encouraged, and a tutor provided. By the age of twenty-three he was teaching music at a private school in the city and his first symphony had been performed, to encouraging reviews. He announced his engagement to an eighteen-year-old girl of good family, and then, scandalously, broke off the engagement a few months later, having fallen in love with another woman. This, of course, was Flora Abernethy, an “older woman” (she was twenty-five) with no living relations, who played the violin in a chamber group, and supported herself by giving music lessons. Although they traveled together unchaperoned, and may have lived together, Flora always kept her own rented room, and they did not marry. Wallace hinted that a prior marriage had made it impossible for Flora legally to marry Edward, but Thomas had interviewed Flora Abernethy and quoted her “philosophical and moral objections” to marriage.
According to the earlier biography, Craithe had been lured into joining a strange cult by the gullible Flora, who was under the influence of its leader. According to Thomas there was no cult, only a Taoist monk called Hsiu Tang whom Flora and Edward had separately approached for tuition in traditional Chinese music. Along with musical instruction he had taught them his own esoteric branch of Taoism which was based on the ancient Chinese belief that everything was created out of music, and that it was possible to learn to hear this divine music through a specialized form of meditation. The details now could only be guessed at and supposed. Hsiu Tang had, like Craithe, vanished around 1940.
Both biographies ended with speculation on what had happened to Craithe. They were in agreement that after being called up he had deliberately deserted, under pressure from Flora, who was pregnant. Wallace believed that, after a period of hiding out, perhaps in Wales where Flora had suffered a miscarriage, Craithe had repented of his cowardice and gone to London to enlist under a false name. He had then become one of the many casualties of the war, dead in some foreign field, buried under an assumed name. Thomas went along as far as the flight to Wales and the miscarriage, but then, as Flora descended into madness, he believed that Craithe had left (perhaps unaware of how ill Flora had become, assuming she would follow later) and gone by boat to Ireland. There he had stayed in a cottage on the west coast, living like a hermit and continuing to compose
music, for several years until his death, while still a young man, from what might have been TB. Much hand-written sheet music had apparently been found in the cottage after his death, and although most of it had been destroyed, the author claimed to be in possession of a few remaining scraps in which he had recognized Craithe’s distinctive style.
More for the computer to analyze, I thought happily. I was always happier when I found a way of using the computer. I don’t know how I’d live without it.
*
Back at home, I trawled the Internet in search of connections, posting requests here and there. If there was anyone writing a biography or otherwise researching Craithe, I wanted to know about it.
I arranged a meeting with my TV people and came away with seed money — well, with a contract and the promise of seed money. The zeitgeist was with me: Scottish composers were “in,” and if I could, as I’d hinted, solve the mystery of Craithe’s disappearance — big time. If not, well, I could still have an effective, artistic little biography to appeal to a smaller audience.
I tracked down the biographer, Mark Thomas, and took him out to lunch. He agreed to give me copies of the music that had been found in the cottage in Ireland, although he warned me that they were only scraps, not enough to prove anything.
“They might be enough for the computer,” I said. “They can extrapolate from very little, and make comparisons with the body of work.”
He scowled. “I can do that, too. I could continue what there is on certain lines … but that’s not to say that what I came up with would be what Craithe wrote. I think you have the wrong idea about how music works: yes, it may be mathematical, but that’s not to say it is utterly predictable. Set a problem within certain limits, take any five musicians and no two of them would reach the same conclusion.”
