‘She is stubborn. Obstinate, I would say. She won’t do what the other children are doing. She won’t play. She stands against a wall and does nothing. She won’t do games or P.E. She won’t eat her lunch. She won’t answer if you ask her a question.’
‘But that’s no reason to exclude her, surely?’ Kate said.
‘No.’ Miss O’Grady began to flip the wooden ruler over and over on the desk. ‘It is something worse.’
‘What?’ Kate asked.
‘It’s – I’m afraid it’s something evil, Mrs Barcussy.’
‘Evil? What do you mean?’
‘Tessa insists on talking about ghosts. She is adamant that she sees them, right here in the classroom.’
‘Surely not – give me an example.’
‘We had a child who came in crying because her granny had died, and I told the children to leave her alone – but Tessa shouted out, in the middle of a spelling lesson that she could see the child’s granny. She even tried to describe what she was wearing. Then – very recently – she actually claimed she could see Alfred Lord Tennyson, if you please, in the classroom. I’ve told her and told her not to do it, but she does, and she does it in an extremely disruptive way. It frightens and upsets the other children – I’ve had parents complaining about it. I’ve punished Tessa, or tried to, but she just sits there, mutinous. Believe me, Mrs Barcussy, I’ve tried everything.’ Miss O’Grady brandished the ruler at Kate. ‘One day I smacked her hands really hard with this ruler – and do you know what she did?’
‘What?’
‘She picked up her own ruler and smacked me right back, and do you know what she said?’
‘Go on,’ Kate said, shocked.
‘She screamed at me. “I hate you,” she said – and her eyes looked EVIL. It’s bad and disruptive for the other children, don’t you think?’
‘I can see what you mean,’ Kate said, ‘but I believe in my daughter. I know there’s good in her, and I want to get to the bottom of this. Why does she hate you so? We must find a way to help her, not condemn her. Now, I suggest we invite the vicar to come and talk it over with us, and perhaps he can talk to Tessa. He is a school governor, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, he is – and of course it’s a church school. I think that’s a good idea.’
Tessa felt abandoned. She sat obediently on a chair in Miss O’Grady’s office, her legs not quite reaching the floor, her eyes watching a honey bee climbing up and down the window pane. Trapped, like she was, desperately seeking a way back into the paradise of a garden in the sun. She heard its high-pitched whine of distress.
Her mother was there, next to her, leaning forward as if she was riding a horse, her bright brown eyes darting attentively from one to the other. Miss O’Grady was there, and so was the Reverend Reminsy. Tessa knew they were talking about whether to give her a chance to come back to school. She didn’t care, didn’t want to go there anyway, and didn’t listen to what was being said.
It seemed to Tessa that even her mother had abandoned her, and her father wasn’t there to defend her. Freddie had taken Lucy for a walk in the woods, and Jonti had gone with them. That hurt as well. Jonti is MY dog, Tessa thought angrily. Alone in the garden that morning Tessa had gone into the ‘Anderson Hollow’ under the lilac bushes. She’d sat underneath one, gazing at the exuberant blossom and the flakes of blue, blue sky between. For once the beauty didn’t make her happy. It made her sad. She was no longer part of that beautiful world. She didn’t belong to herself. She belonged to the adults in her life who wanted to own her and change her. She would be like the milkman’s pony, forever in harness, blinkered, obedient and servile, not free.
How could she stop them trying to trap her and harness her? How could she protect herself? Tessa saw a caterpillar crawling up a weathered tree stump. It found a crack and went in there. Fascinated, she watched it spinning a thread around and around itself, twirling as it hung there, lit by a beam of sunlight. It was making a cocoon, a safe place to hide and change.
Suppose I did that, Tessa thought. I’ll be like a caterpillar and build myself a cocoon of white silk. I can hide in there safely, until I’m old enough to be a butterfly and fly away into the sky where no one can get me.
So she sat, silent and detached, in the meeting, visualising the silver threads glistening in the sun as they wrapped her into a thicker and thicker cocoon.
‘She’s not listening! Look at her,’ said Miss O’Grady’s exasperated voice.
‘TESSA!’
She jumped as the Reverend Reminsy brought his whiskery face uncomfortably close to hers. His eyes pierced the cocoon and looked into hers like two nails being hammered into a tree. ‘If you won’t talk and explain yourself, Tessa, then you are going to listen,’ he announced. ‘Look at me please, at my eyes. Do you know why I’m here?’
Tessa shook her head.
‘I’m here because I’m a school governor – and I’m here to help you, Tessa. I have persuaded Miss O’Grady to give you another chance. She has kindly agreed to let you come back to school,’ he said, ‘BUT – you have got to change your ways, young lady. Do you understand that?’
Tessa nodded.
‘You are not to run away. You are not to be rude and answer back. You are to do everything Miss O’Grady tells you to do, even if you don’t like it. You are to eat your lunch and join in with games and try hard to make friends, Tessa. Do you understand me?’
She nodded.
‘AND,’ he continued, ‘all this nonsense about seeing people who have died HAS GOT TO STOP.’ He banged his hands together and Tessa jumped, frightened by the force of his tone and the way his eyes burned into her. ‘Even if you do think you see them, you are not – I repeat ARE NOT – to tell ANYONE.’
The ‘ANYONE’ hung in the air between them. Tessa imagined all the people she knew disappearing down a hole and leaving her alone at the brink with no one to talk to, no one to share her dreams and ideas. She felt her eyes growing shiny with hot, thick tears.
‘Do you understand why I am talking to you like this?’ the Reverend Reminsy asked more kindly.
Tessa shook her head.
‘I’m not just being unkind to you, and neither is Miss O’Grady, and neither is your mother. No – don’t look away. Keep looking at my eyes, Tessa. This is to help you with your life, child. If you don’t behave properly, like Lucy, then you won’t have a happy, successful life. You won’t have an education because no one will put up with you, and if you don’t have an education you won’t be able to get a job and you won’t be able to grow up and get married and have a family of your own. Do you understand that?’
Tessa nodded. She felt the words being chiselled into her soul, like letters on a tombstone. She glanced at her mother.
‘He’s right, Tessa. You’ve got to try and be more like Lucy,’ Kate said.
‘Yes – I agree,’ Miss O’Grady said. ‘Lucy’s such a good girl, and everyone likes her.’
‘You’ve caused your mother a lot of worry and heartache,’ said the Reverend Reminsy. ‘Do you understand that, Tessa?’
Tessa nodded, her small hands gripping the seat of the chair. She felt her life was over. She was a failure at being a human being. It seemed impossible to her. There was no way forward. She looked at her mother and saw pain and anxiety in those bright brown eyes, eyes that usually shone with fun. ‘I’m sorry, Mummy,’ she whispered.
‘I should think you are,’ snapped Miss O’Grady.
Kate put her arm round Tessa’s shoulders. ‘Well, sorry is a good place to start,’ she said warmly.
‘You’re lucky to have such a kind mother,’ said Miss O’Grady, and her eyes glinted. ‘I hope we can start again, Tessa. Otherwise you will be sent away to a home for bad children.’
Tessa’s mouth fell open. A home for bad children? Far away from the places she loved. Away from her own home and family.
That one comment appalled and frightened her. Shock waves cracked through her aura like arteries of ink.
It wasn’t fair. Why should this bone-thin woman stir up such hatred in her? Tessa wanted to give Miss O’Grady a poisoned apple like the witch in Snow White.
She got down from her chair and walked towards her teacher’s cruel eyes which seemed to be mocking her. She heard her mother’s anxious voice. ‘No, Tessa, sit down dear, please.’
Suddenly the cocoon she had constructed around herself began to spin crazily. The white silk threads turned black and unravelled in little spirals and coils. She felt exposed, as if her beating heart had been unwrapped and left on the floor in front of Miss O’Grady.
‘Tessa!’
Kate moved forward quickly and got her arms firmly around Tessa as the child turned deathly pale and lost consciousness. ‘I’m so sorry,’ Kate said, ‘it’s all too much for her.’
PART TWO
1960
Chapter Ten
1960
The young man stood at the edge of the woods, under a beech tree; the afternoon sun touched the texture of his long hair and the wiry crinkles of his beard. He stood so still that he seemed part of the wood, a face staring from an ancient tree trunk, his bare feet disappearing into the leaf mould as if he had grown there.
He was listening to the voice of the beech tree, and watching the wind moving through cornfields far away, waiting for the same fan-shaped gusts to dive into the foliage above him. He was thinking that the wind came from the sea. It tasted faintly of salt. It painted the ocean in his mind, in jewel-like colours, lace over silk in the long stretches between waves. The wind raised a sable brush and painted him there, a crouched silhouette flying on a Malibu surfboard.
He wore a heavy denim jacket covered in bulging pockets he had stitched onto it in meaningful scraps of fabric: a square of his granny’s old pinny, a patch from the curtains he’d once had, a piece of bottle green crushed velvet that had once been a cushion. He put his hand into it and pulled out a dog-eared notebook. Frowning, he added a few lines to the poem he’d been writing.
He stared across the open hillside to the girl who was still lying there, not moving, the wind ruffling her chestnut hair. The man glanced at the shadows of the wood on the bright grassland and figured it must have been an hour since she had moved. Don’t get involved, Art, he thought. Women, you don’t need right now. Be free, man.
But some magnetic force drew him towards the still figure of the girl. Something ancient in his soul. He padded over the springy turf, his bare feet enjoying the softness, his hair flowing in the breeze. Why was he walking towards this girl? He didn’t know. He just let go, and let his feet walk.
There was an aura around the girl. It wasn’t welcoming. It was a cry. A light and a colour that actually cried out to the sky, to the land, and to him. The closer he got, the more Art found himself captivated. He wanted to scoop the sleeping girl into his arms and take her to the wild shores of the Atlantic where the salt wind and the surf would heal her damaged soul.
He stood, on quiet feet, looking down at the satin folds of the sea-blue dress swirled over her slim body. An ant was crawling on one of her tanned legs. He watched it disappear into the diamond hole in the front of her sandals. He watched a tendril of her chestnut hair reach out into the wind as if trying to touch him. He felt the cry emanating from her aura, like a harmonic echoing from a bell, invisible, inaudible, but sensed in the sudden chill that crawled up his spine.
Art cleared his throat. It was a long time since he had spoken to anyone. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
There was no response. Art squatted down, thinking he might gently touch the girl’s hand. He studied it for a moment, noting the smooth, tanned skin, the elegant fingers and shell-like nails which had been beautifully filed. The sun flashed on something metallic lying in a patch of thyme. A blue-black Gillette razorblade, a new one, with a stain of blood along its edge. ‘Oh God!’ he gasped. ‘God – no.’ He saw the blood in the grass around Tessa’s left hand which was flung sideways, away from her face as if she couldn’t bear to look.
Art acted swiftly then, his heart banging in fear, his mind hammering out prayers he’d learned long ago in another lifetime. He ripped the scarf from his neck, turned Tessa over and tied it tightly around her arm just above the elbow, twisting, twisting it, and muttering, ‘Stop. Stop. Come on. Stop bleeding.’ He held her arm up straight and kept it there, watching it turn blue as the flow of blood slowed to a trickle. He looked down at Tessa’s face, the chestnut lashes curled against her pale skin, her cheeks softly rounded, her brow smooth with a sublime peacefulness that told him she was already far away in some undiscovered land.
Desperately he scanned the hillside for another human being, but there was no one. He knew the hospital was miles away. There wasn’t even a cottage nearby with a telephone. The road! he thought, it’s her only chance. Gathering Tessa’s limp body into his strong arms, he ran towards the road, hearing the grinding gears of a car coming up the winding hill. With bare feet on hot tarmac, he straddled the road and flagged down the battered Morris 10.
He looked through the passenger window at a scowling farmer in a trilby hat. ‘Can you help – please?’
The wings of the butterfly arched into Tessa’s consciousness like stained glass in the gloom of a church. Its eyes watched her with unassuming wisdom. Twice it flew away, circled, and returned to pitch on her hand. Though her eyes were closed, Tessa sensed its cottony legs on her skin. She saw herself rise from the crumpled sea-blue satin and the chestnut curls of her hair lying on the hillside. Floating, she glanced down at it with a sense of relief. Her spirit was leaving! She followed the flickering colours of the butterfly into the woods where it guided her through towering tree trunks until its wings seemed to expand and dissolve into the spaces between the branches.
In a dream-like state, Tessa sat down on a moss-covered log, in a place she had visited before in her dreams. Fragrance drifted through the trees, from the haze of bluebells in the distance. A stream trickled nearby, like tiny bells, drawing threads of glittering light over the roots of trees and into pools where cresses grew. The banks were cushioned with moss so green that the whole wood seemed luminous with a light of its own.
Tessa stared into the light between the lime trees. It seemed to crackle like a sparkler she had held in her hand on firework night. It blazed with dazzling stars of silver and gold. From the centre of the light footsteps emerged, making no sound, across the woodland floor. She sensed them, welcomed them, allowing the presence to arrive and enfold her in healing light. She raised her left hand and turned it to look at her wrist with the blue veins like rivers in the sand. It shone, blue and white, and perfect. There was no cut. No blood. No pain. No reason. In spirit she was perfect.
She turned to gaze into the timeless loving eyes of the man in a saffron robe who sat beside her on the log. Tessa knew him well. He had talked to her in daydreams and trances, always serious, yet his eyes twinkled with mysterious humour. Like her mother’s eyes, they radiated reassurance. ‘All is well,’ he said. ‘You are welcome, Tessa. Stay here, and rest for as long as you need. Take all the healing you need. There is no limitation. But when you feel ready, you must go back. It is not time for you to pass into spirit. Go back and be Tessa, and be ready for change – a good change, and a kindred spirit – a friend to walk with you. You will know him by the intensity of his eyes.’
Tessa sighed. The longing to go home to the world of spirit ached in her heart. Wasn’t it enough? Fourteen friendless years? Fourteen years of being the one who ‘made trouble’. She didn’t want to make trouble. She longed to be ‘normal’, like the girls she envied. Confident, happy girls, like Lucy, like Fiona. Girls who never saw what she saw or wanted what she wanted or dreamed what she dreamed. Girls who had a place to go, a respectable niche in the world that would guarantee respectability. Not the wild, untrodden paths that Tessa wanted. She wasn’t interested in anything her peer group talked about. Mostly it was clothes, boys, pop music, cookery. No one else wanted to talk about poetry, philosophy
and art. Even those three labels had a nameless beyond, a forbidden realm of mysticism, and that was where Tessa wanted to be. Banned from using her true gifts, she felt useless and unwanted, sick, sick, sick of trying to conform. It seemed that as soon as she found something she loved and wanted to do, a barrier slammed down in front of her, fierce and iron hard, like a portcullis edged with merciless spikes.
‘You must go back.’ The man in the saffron robe spoke to her with love and kindness. ‘You are needed.’
‘I don’t feel needed,’ Tessa said. ‘No one needs ME.
‘Gaia does.’
‘Gaia? Who is that?’
‘Gaia is your mother planet. Planet earth. She is sick, Tessa, and your strength and knowledge will lead the way to her healing. Many will follow you. I urge you, at this time, to study environmental issues. The Warriors of the Rainbow. The Findhorn Garden. The book called Silent Spring. Study them. Seek them out and do not let anyone stop you, Tessa. You are blessed with intuition. Your time will come.’
Tessa stared into his eyes. In her dreamlike state she felt change wash over her like an ocean wave. She felt suddenly strong, like a figurehead on the prow of a boat. A strong woman with her hair flying in the wind. A leader. Is that me? she thought, and the answer came from the man’s voice.
‘Yes, that is you. A strong woman. Not a girl. You were never a girl. You were born a woman. That is why you cried so much, Tessa.’
She nodded slowly. It made sense. More sense than anything she’d been told by the adults in her life. Yet part of her didn’t want to be a woman. She was afraid, always afraid.
‘You have nothing to fear but fear itself,’ said the man in the saffron robe. ‘You are on a journey. Look back with me and see how far you have come.’ He held out his hands, and between them was an orb of pulsing light. Tessa watched it, mesmerised, and saw within it a succession of jewel-like images. Cowslips on the millstream. Raindrops on her skin. The wildflower meadows. The wood of the singing nightingales. And the alabaster angel Freddie had carved for her. Then she saw books. Books of magic and beauty, poetry and truth. She saw Alfred Lord Tennyson in the classroom, so bright, as if drawn by a pencil of golden light. Then she saw Jonti, and the horses, and the baby birds she had rescued, the creatures of the stream, the golden frogs and shimmering dragonflies.
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