‘Pari, darling, no one can clean my home like you do. When you leave, it shines like pearls.’
These last few days her head had been full of voices from the past. Of the women she’d worked for, who’d liked her and praised her. Of the one woman, rich and educated, who’d set in motion the train of events that brought her here. ‘It is your right, under the law,’ she’d told Pari’s mother, whilst Pari had listened in awe to her stories of women’s rights, which had seemed as far removed from reality as the fairy stories she’d heard as an infant. ‘Your father’s farm should be shared equally between you and your brother. He has no right to it all. You must ask him for your share.’
For a moment, Pari didn’t see her own face in the mirror, but that of her mother. It had been a kind face, a little like a faded rose, before Pari’s uncle, enraged by his sister’s unreasonable demands, had beaten it to a bloody, blackened mess.
‘It’s that girl of yours who’s put these ideas into your head!’ More voices from the past. Pari put her hands up to her ears. ‘That ugly whore of a daughter. I’ll kill her with my own hands when I see her. I’ll drown her in the trough.’ Pari had cowered outside, listening to her mother’s sobs, knowing he meant it. Knowing that if she stayed, she’d die.
A sudden cramp bent Pari double. What was happening to her? They told her it was nothing. That the sharp pains, the headaches and dizziness, the swelling were nothing more than a bug, picked up on the long journey, coupled with the effects of unfamiliar food.
But she’d never felt this ill in her life before. Even when there was barely enough food to keep the family alive. When her mother had gone from house to house in their city, begging for work to feed her children, when Pari had joined her mother, scrubbing and polishing and sweeping for entire days. She’d never felt this bad.
And today, hours had been lost. She’d woken in the early evening, able to remember nothing since she’d been brought lunch at noon. She’d woken stiff and sore, groggy and stupid from sleep, to find the walls of her room shimmering and dancing as though they were alive.
What were these people doing to her?
THURSDAY, 26 JUNE
43
Lacey
THE GARDEN AT Sayes Court had embraced midsummer. The lavender edging the path had been in bud a week ago; today the small purple flowers were fully open. Bees, lolling and bouncing from stem to stem, seemed almost drunk with pollen. The small, white flowers closest to the path were spreading across it now, softening its hard edges, whilst the taller plants behind had grown even taller. They leaned towards Lacey, as though their heavy pink blooms were weighing them down.
‘Hello!’
When no answer came, Lacey stepped inside the conservatory. Bees, butterflies and other insects had strayed in here, but the heat was exhausting them. They clung limply to panes and leaves, or swayed heavily through the air. The room had been watered recently; drops still shimmered on foliage and the air was full of the scent of damp vegetation.
There was a sound behind Lacey of wheels on concrete and she turned to see Thessa rolling up the path. This morning, her long hair was plaited and wrapped around her head. She wore a turquoise blouse and a long multicoloured, striped skirt that covered her feet. Her jewellery was heavy, fashioned from silver and turquoise.
She beckoned to Lacey. ‘Come here. Into the light. Let me have a good look at you.’
Amused, Lacey did as she was told. ‘Are you alone this morning?’ The house behind her had an empty feel about it.
‘Yes, Alex is at his clinic,’ said Thessa. ‘Now keep still.’
Lacey put her hands behind her back and raised her chin a fraction.
‘The cold didn’t break out, did it?’ Thessa had a note of triumph in her voice.
‘I wasn’t convinced I had a cold in the first place.’
A butterfly hovered for a second above Thessa’s hair, then made for the fresh air outside. ‘But you have been sleeping better, don’t deny it.’
‘Well, that is true,’ said Lacey. ‘But I’ve been having some very vivid dreams.’
‘Frightening or sexual?’ Thessa leaned closer.
‘I’m only complaining about the frightening ones.’
‘That’ll be the mugwort.’ Thessa was nodding knowingly. ‘It does have that side effect sometimes. Especially with people of a sensitive nature.’
Lacey was starting to feel uncomfortable under the intensity of Thessa’s scrutiny. ‘Nobody’s ever described me as sensitive before.’
‘That’s because you direct most of your energy into hiding who you really are. If you’d stop that, your health would improve no end.’
‘I always think of myself as being pretty healthy.’ Lacey’s sense of unease was building. ‘I’m one of the fittest people I know.’
Thessa shook her head emphatically. ‘Ninety per cent nervous energy. You’ll burn out before you’re forty if you carry on. I think I might cut out the mugwort and give you something else. Something for boosting confidence and self-esteem. You need that rather badly. I’m amazed I didn’t see it last time.’
‘Now you’re making me glad I came.’ Lacey stepped back into the doorway of the still room, if only to get out of the light and put the unsettling conference to an end.
‘We should go through.’ Thessa ushered Lacey on ahead. ‘It’s much cooler inside and I have to finish a job before lunch.’
Spread out on the worktop in the cool, dark room were chopping boards, knives, a pestle and mortar, several pre-labelled empty bottles and two distinct bunches of soil-encrusted roots.
‘I’m making a cordial of dandelion and burdock,’ said Thessa. ‘I’ve got three patients waiting for it, but I had to wait for the moon to be on the wane to harvest the roots. Really doesn’t work otherwise.’
‘Dandelion and what?’ said Lacey.
‘Burdock. The roots closest to you. You’re probably too young to remember the fizzy drink, dear, aren’t you? Dark-brown, very sweet, sparkling.’
‘Are you sure you’re not thinking of Coke?’
Thessa pulled her face into something close to a scowl. ‘No, dear, I’m not thinking of any of the brand names of the substance properly known as cola. That has entirely different properties. Dandelion and burdock was a popular fizzy drink about thirty years ago. Very distinctive taste. You can still buy it, but these days the flavours are artificially produced. I make the real thing.’
Lacey looked into Thessa’s eyes, but if the twinkle was there she couldn’t see it. ‘I’m not sure I’d know a burdock if I saw one.’ She looked down at the shrivelled brown roots, like carrots that had been too long in the bottom of the fridge.
‘Can’t miss it,’ said Thessa. ‘For one thing, it’s everywhere, and for another, it’s very good at attaching itself to passers-by. It has a sort of thistle-head or bur that detaches and clings to clothes and animal fur. It’s also known as the Velcro plant because the chappy who invented Velcro got the idea from looking at the thistles.’
‘Well, I admit, Velcro is pretty useful.’
‘Velcro Schmelcro,’ snapped Thessa. ‘There are records of burdock treating cancer back in the Dark Ages and leprosy in the Middle Ages. Henry VIII was given it for his syphilis.’
‘Did it work?’
Thessa’s face took on a prim look, as though a king’s venereal disease was an improper subject for levity. ‘I believe it relieved the symptoms, but didn’t cure the underlying cause. And the plant is currently the subject of clinical trials to test its efficacy with cancer and HIV.’
Lacey nodded at the small, brown roots. ‘I’m impressed. And the dandelion?’
‘Almost as good. And they’re perfect partners, because dandelion is a diuretic, expelling all the wastes away through the kidneys and the liver.’
‘What can I do?’ asked Lacey.
‘You can peel the roots,’ said Thessa. ‘Then give them a good scrub under the tap. No, use the blue peeler – that one has chickweed on it.’
Lacey picked up a root and ran the peeler down it. Yep, just like peeling an old, limp carrot.
‘Good girl,’ said Thessa. ‘When you’ve done that, you can chop them up small and then do the same with the dandelion roots. I need about five hundred grams of each. The scales are in the corner. You don’t have many friends, do you?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I see a terrible sense of loneliness hovering over you.’
Lacey concentrated on the peeling. ‘I’m quite a private person.’
‘And there it is again, that veil. You know who you remind me of, dear? The women from my part of the world who wear those long, flowing robes to hide themselves.’
‘I thought you and your brother were Greek.’
‘We’re not talking about me, Lacey. I never wore the burka. You do. We can’t see it, but it’s hiding you all the same.’
The peeling done, Lacey carried the burdock roots to the sink and ran the tap. She couldn’t remember when she’d last washed a vegetable. ‘What will you do with them next?’ she asked Thessa, who was clattering around in a cupboard under the other sink.
‘I’m going to boil the roots, then strain the liquid,’ Thessa told her. ‘Then I’ll add sugar and boil again until it’s dissolved. When it’s cool, I can bottle it. How’s your appetite, dear?’
‘Fine,’ said Lacey.
‘Hmm, you don’t cook fresh food much, do you?’
‘Are you planning to give me a bill for all this free consultation?’
‘If I billed you, it wouldn’t be free, would it? That’s good. Now, can you chop them nice and fine, like slicing carrots for a stew, if you ever slice carrots.’
Lacey checked the width of the slices she was producing and started cutting thinner. ‘You’re very judgemental, you know that?’
‘Next time you have a headache, dear, eat a few dandelion flowers. But only when the sun is shining, otherwise they’ll be too bitter.’
‘How long have you been a herbalist?’ asked Lacey, as she finished chopping the burdock roots and carried the dandelion roots to the sink.
‘These forty years,’ said Thessa. ‘Alex and I both went into medicine, but he took the conventional route and I deviated.’
‘Do you ever work together?’
‘Good lord, dear! Did you ever meet a Western doctor who would have anything to do with alternative medicine? It’s little better than witchcraft to most of them. Thank you, that’s lovely. I’m going to boil them up later when it’s cooler, so they can stay there for now. Can you help me with some raspberry leaves?’
Lacey agreed that she could, and the two women left the still room.
‘I think I’m going to take back the mugwort and give you a tincture of hops instead,’ said Thessa, as they went out into the sunshine again. ‘It’s a very useful sedative. The only disadvantage is that its oestrogen-like compounds do tend to increase the female libido, and that can’t be good for you with your man playing fast and loose the way he is.’
Lacey wondered if it were possible for body temperature to drop, purely at the sound of someone’s words. Or whether it just felt that way. ‘What do you know about my man?’ she asked, trying to sound light-hearted, as though the question were amusing.
‘Not a sausage. Which I’m having for lunch, incidentally, if you’d like to stay. But I can spot a lovesick girl a mile off.’
‘Do your patients come to see you here?’ Anything to take Thessa’s attention away from her.
‘No. Alex feels very strongly that our home is private. I have a couple of rooms just off Harley Street. You look surprised, dear. You can’t imagine a mad old fool like me on Harley Street, but you’d be surprised what some people will pay for health. I treat a lot of young women with fertility problems. Between three and six months it usually takes me, to get their cycles as regular as the moon. I try to synchronize the menstrual period with the new moon, if I can. Egg follicles grow best when the moon is waxing.’
There didn’t seem a lot to say to that, so Lacey stepped back to let Thessa precede her under an archway of vines into a fruit garden. The first beds were strawberries, scattered with tiny, white flowers and already glistening with fruit. They passed gooseberry bushes, then redcurrants. The raspberries, on their tall, spindly stems, were plentiful, but small and green.
‘Just the leaves today, dear,’ said Thessa. ‘The new ones grow high on the bushes and I can’t reach them.’
‘Dare I ask what you do with raspberry leaves?’ said Lacey.
‘I make tea. Even you must have seen raspberry-leaf tea in the supermarkets. Of course, mine is much stronger. I give it to my successes. It’s wonderful for strengthening the uterus before giving birth. Damn it!’
The basket of leaves had slipped from Thessa’s lap. Lacey bent down, gathered up the leaves and returned them to the basket before offering it to Thessa, who seemed to be in pain.
‘Are you OK?’
Thessa took hold of both legs just below the knee and tugged at them. For a split second Lacey caught a glimpse of wrinkled bare feet, pressed very close together, before Thessa smoothed her long skirt to cover them again.
‘Can I do anything?’ said Lacey.
Thessa shook her head. ‘Physician, heal thyself, huh? If there’s a plant that can help me, I’ve yet to find it.’
Lacey carried on snipping leaves. ‘Did you have an accident? Sorry if I’m being nosy, but you seem so – well, so lively. You don’t seem like someone who’s spent her whole life in a wheelchair.’
‘That’s a very sweet thing to say, dear, but I have. Something went wrong with my legs in the womb. We are twins, Alex and I, so maybe there just wasn’t enough room for both of us.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘That’s why my little boat is important. On the water, I’m the same as everyone else. If we lived in the country, I’d probably ride a horse. As it is, I need my time on the water. It makes me feel normal. But I expect you know all about that, dear. The never-ending effort to appear normal.’
17 MAY
(five weeks earlier)
44
Badrai
THE SMALL BALL of cork comes hurtling through Badrai’s open window and lands with a noisy clatter on the floor. Badrai doesn’t move. Somebody would have heard that, surely? She waits.
Bad things happen to women in this house.
Outside, the sound of a helicopter, but in the distance. Traffic on the nearby roads. Voices somewhere. This city is never silent. The water is high, lapping softly against the walls of the house, and against those across the creek. When she arrived, Badrai was hardly able to believe the way the houses grew out of the water. Surely they’d just dissolve, rot away and crumble down into the river? Those first weeks she had trouble sleeping, expecting to wake at any moment and feel that sickening, landslide-like movement beneath her as the house and all its occupants sank into a wet grave.
The house is still. If someone did hear the metallic clatter of the ball and its attached keys landing on her floor they aren’t rushing up here to stop her leaving. They are listening, biding their time, waiting to see what she will do.
Nothing. Do nothing. Throw the ball back, close the window, jump into bed and pull the pillow up around your ears. Trust the people who are taking care of you. They say you will leave soon, that there is a job and a home waiting, people who will help you. They say it so many times: as soon as you are well. Trust them.
Bad things happen to women in this house.
Without a sound, Badrai crosses to the window and looks out. The boat is just feet below her. The sky is thick with clouds and there is no light in the creek. The boat is no more substantial than a dark shadow on the surface of the water. Only the pale face of the driver is visible.
No urgent commands. No gestures. No signs of impatience. No attempts to convince. It has all been said already.
Bad things happen to women in this house.
Does she believe it? She didn’t want
to. The room is so clean and comfortable, the food so good. The people taking care of her so kind.
But the crying she hears when the house has fallen quiet for the night? The shouting of women whose requests are denied. The locks that are always turned? The pain in her stomach and back, which never seems to go away?
The boat is waiting. It won’t for long.
Badrai picks up the cork ball. Two keys. One of which she already knows will fit the door to her room, the other the back door of the house. She lifts the key and slips it into the lock. She listens for as long as she dares. All is still.
Five minutes later she is stepping down into the boat. The driver smiles.
FRIDAY, 27 JUNE
45
Lacey and Dana
‘GOOD AFTERNOON. I’M afraid there’s an operation in progress ahead. We’re going to have to ask you to take a detour. What do you draw?’
The master of the tugboat gave Lacey the dimensions of his boat.
‘You should be fine,’ she told him. ‘Can you make for that line of red buoys and steer between them and the shore? At St George’s Stairs you’re clear again.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Just routine, Sir. Thank you for your cooperation.’
The tugboat moved off up-river and Sergeant Buckle, up on the fly bridge, steered them towards the next boat heading their way. In spite of emails sent out to all craft that regularly used the Thames, in spite of frequent messages on the Thames shipping channels, a lot of vessels didn’t seem aware that half the river was closed for much of the day.
‘Any time you want to get involved, just say,’ she muttered to Turner, who was reading the Daily Mirror in the cockpit.
He didn’t bother looking up. ‘We both know they’ll be a lot more lippy if I try and boss ’em about. Cute girlie in uniform and they bend over backwards.’
A Dark and Twisted Tide Page 15
