Beyond the Realms

by Gill Mather

  “Put the knife away and turn round and leave. Now.”

  Mike opened his mouth to say something, shook his head in a puzzled fashion, turned and started to walk off the other way.

  “Put the knife away and don’t do that again.”

  Mike turned and faced them as he walked, he swallowed, nodded slightly, looked worried, put the knife back in his pocket and left.

  “Triss. Triss.” Orielle rushed towards him. Briefly he held her.

  “You should look after yourself better,” he said. Then, “I must go.”

  “What? No, Triss, no!” She tried to cling onto him but something stopped her.

  “Yes I must.” Tristram started to move off and Orielle tried to go after him but suddenly her feet were set in concrete and her limbs felt leaden. He strode off towards the end of the passage and turned left. Or was it right? Though they’d seen him clearly, neither of them were sure which way it was by the time they’d unfrozen and hurried after him to the open lit street. Orielle’s brain felt muddled. There was no sign of him in either direction.

  Thinking back afterwards, it all seemed dreamlike. She couldn't even remember what clothes he’d been wearing, whether his beard was long or short and she started to wonder if it had happened at all.

  Back at home she asked Georgie: “It did happen, didn’t it? Triss did suddenly appear didn’t he and make that Mike leave? He did didn’t he?”

  “I think so. It all seems a bit misty now. Wow that was weird! We didn’t have that much to drink did we?”

  “Well I didn’t. Will you `phone Jack tomorrow?”

  “Try and stop me!”

  “It’s not that late but I feel really tired. I think I’ll go to bed.”

  Surprising, Georgie thought, that she’s not in floods of tears. But she seemed oddly calm, rather like Georgie herself felt.

  “Yes, I’ll turn in as well.” She was going to tell Orie not to get too upset but it didn’t seem necessary.

  Orielle went upstairs and in her room alone she undressed slowly. She could feel Triss there with her, caressing her, helping her to undress, stroking her hair. It wasn’t erotic. Just supremely relaxing. She got naked into bed and ran her hands up and down her body and it felt like Triss’s hands. She curled up on her side and wrapped her arms, Triss’s arms, around herself and in a few seconds in a haze of love and comfort she slept.

  BUT THE EUPHORIA didn't last. Early the next morning Orielle found herself waking already weeping copiously. The Saturday stretched wretchedly ahead. She would, she decided, go into work to take her mind off things, that is when she’d recovered a bit.

  Hearing Orielle and feeling guilty at her own giddy prospects, Georgie took a cup of tea in to her and sat on the bed. “Come on now. Sit up and try and drink this.” Orielle raised herself from the pillow but couldn't stop the flow of tears. Georgie put her arms round her friend and rocked her gently. Like a big mother bear, Orielle thought and gradually she calmed down.

  “It was a weird evening wasn't it.” It was rhetorical rather than a question.

  “You’re not kidding,” said Georgie.

  “What I can't work out,” Orielle mumbled into Georgie’s bosom, “is how you ever thought that guy Mike, if that’s what his name was, could ever turn out to be a nice person. And yet with Triss, so obviously harmless and non-violent, you were imagining all sorts of horrors about him.”

  “Actually I wouldn't like to bet that Triss is harmless after last night.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How many other people do you know could make someone about to attack a couple of women put his knife away and walk away just by talking to him and…well…just by being there.”

  “Yes but….I don't know…he’s….well maybe he knows some sort of advanced hypnotism techniques or something. A friend at uni went to see a Derren Brown show once and she said it was just remarkable what he could tell about people and get them to do. But the point is that Triss is obviously gentle and sweet whereas that monster last night….Georgie you thought he was OK but he could have hurt us.”

  “So what are you saying? That Jack might turn out to be an axe murderer?”

  This was so implausible and extreme and delivered in that deadpan, solemn way of Georgie’s like a Jewish stand-up comedian that Orielle started to laugh. And then so did Georgie.

  “Orie, I do agree with you. Triss is a good person. I can appreciate that now. Though hopelessly irritating to live with. Perhaps he will come back some time.”

  “I hope so,” said Orielle in a small voice. But she had to doubt it.

  “You know it must mean he’s watching over you. To turn up just like that.”

  “I suppose it must. But still he doesn’t come back to me. And he made us unable to go after him last night.”

  “It certainly seemed like it.”

  “I tried to hold onto him but I couldn't. Do you mind not telling anyone about that. If he were to come back, I wouldn't want anyone to know and I don’t think it would be good for him. People probably wouldn't believe us anyway.”

  “No. No you’re right. We shouldn't say anything.”

  “Not even Jack?”

  “Look there isn't a me and Jack. Yet. God I do so hope there will be though! Orie he’s just everything I’ve ever wanted. I can tell. Big, strong, kind. Seemingly unattached. Lets hope he’s not the type of sailor that has a berth in every port! Knowing my luck with men!”

  “Well he didn’t look that type. I hope there will be a you and Jack too. I so hope it works out for you.”

  “And Orie. Don’t give up hope about Triss. I reckon he’ll come back some time. I wouldn't quite stake my life on it, but I’d put quite a bit of money on it.”

  “Well I won't bet against it. Anyway, I’d better get ready for work. I’ve decided to go in this morning to take my mind off things.”

  “Right. I’ll go and get a bit spruced up. You never know. Jack might want to meet for coffee or lunch or something.” And she danced out of the room.

  CHAPTER 11

  ORIE WAS DOING A stint at Patterson Watts & Trimble at the moment, as arranged by Hugh and decided to go to PWT this morning rather than The Chambers. She was working in the probate and trusts department and absolutely hated the work but she needed something mind-numbing and plodding to get her teeth into. A few people were in, including the department head and partner, Seb Ferguson. He’d only been with the firm about three years, but had, people said, breathed new life into the previously flagging department. He was young, enthusiastic, lively, very clever, a member of STEP and apparently saved people millions. But Orielle still couldn’t get worked up about probate and trusts.

  She had been entrusted to take instructions on a few simple Wills the week before. No tax planning involved, nothing complicated, and she spent the morning drafting the Wills and at twelve thirty, she took them to Seb to look over.

  “Very good Orie,” he said cheerfully after a cursory glance. “So next week, perhaps you can try something a bit more taxing, pardon the pun. We’ll get you some simple tax avoidance cases. Read this over the weekend.” He rifled through his bookcase and thrust a paperback at Orie and some printed notes of his own from his desk drawer.” She looked at the book. It was called “Drafting Trusts and Will Trusts” and it looked pretty complicated though the preface said it was a practical book.

  “I’m in this afternoon,” she said to Seb, “so I’ll carry on.”

  “Actually. Sorry but I think everyone’s leaving about now. I’ve got to take my kids to the dry ski slope for a practice this afternoon. We’re off to The Alps soon. You can't really stay here on your own.

  “Sorry,” he said again.

  “Oh well, never mind. I’ll take it home. Thanks for the information.”

  “No problem.” He looked up at her from his chair. He was a bit like Hugh in his general demeanour she had decided but more forthcoming and less, actually quite a bit less, good-looking though almost anyone would be. S
till he had an aura of confidence and competence about him that was reassuring and drew you in.

  “Everything all right Orielle?”

  “Yes. Why shouldn’t it be?”

  “Well. You just look sort of….lost.”

  Oh no. Did it show that much?

  “Yes. I’m fine.” She tried to sound and look convincing. “Bye now. See you Monday.” She hurried out with the thickish book and Seb’s copious notes. In her small assigned room, little more than a broom cupboard into which she’d have had to be shoe-horned if she’d been a little bigger (when she’d mentioned this to Hugh, he’d turned an odd shade of pale grey, nodded and hurried off to do something terribly pressing) she gathered up her bag, `phone etc and left.

  So where to now? She’d go home soon, she told herself as she made her way inevitably to the narrow passage she’d been in the night before when Triss had suddenly appeared. She stopped where she thought he had stood and looked down, imagining his feet planted there on the broken tarmac with cobbles showing through, imagining every inch of him, trying to conjure up his presence. The passage was as dank and depressing as the night before. The brick walls showed the grime of years of chimney smoke and exhaust fumes. The bins were overflowing and the windows looked filthy. Some has torn dirty net curtains inside and she stood on tiptoe and peered into the ground floor windows of some of the properties. There was no logic to it. Where had he come from so suddenly? Triss had disappeared into the next street. So that’s what she did. Looking left and right, it suddenly occurred to her that the public library wasn’t far away. Triss had often gone there and she quickened her pace in that direction. It was busy inside as she went up the escalator to the first floor. There were loads of people everywhere, today being a Saturday. She looked about her and without meaning to her eyes started to fill with tears. The sheer fruitlessness of what she was doing was all too evident. Through the mists of her tears, it was all too easy to think she was catching a glimpse of Triss here and there, his fair hair, his stubble, his slightly hooked nose. She turned this way and that, knowing people were staring at her, knowing she must look quite unhinged to other people. But she felt detached and yet frantic at the same time. At this rate, she would go mad. With her head down, she found she was muttering to herself that she’d find an excuse to go to the university library and go to the science section when she rounded a bookshelf and bumped into someone tall and solid. It was Hugh.

  For a long moment they looked at each other. She found it difficult to break the spell and look away or say something. So evidently did he as he looked down at her. He had his hands on her arms where they had rested when they’d collided pushing her slightly away but staying there nonetheless. Orielle’s bag and the book and notes were up against Hugh’s shirt, resting on his chest.

  Hugh drew a breath. “Orielle,” he said at last still looking her straight in the eyes.

  What, she wondered, was it about her that seemed to provoke this reaction in him. He had a partner, she knew they were going to have a baby together. They seemed in fact terminally happy together. And yet….

  “I’ve just come in to borrow some gardening books for Amanda,” Hugh smiled and the spell was partly broken. “It’s one of her hobbies. And our garden certainly needs an overhall after several years of neglect.” The words held a secret Orielle felt. It was a little like a confidence and she was drawn, compelled to say that she was there looking for Tristram. Hugh was her boss and distant with her at the best of times but she couldn't help it. His eyes softened.

  “Well. Things usually work out in the end somehow. Er….have you any idea where he is?”

  “Not really. He’s round here somewhere.” She looked about her and therefore Hugh did the same.

  “I mean he’s in Colchester I think. That’s all I know.”

  Hugh looked so kind and concerned that she started to cry, very softly into Hugh’s chest as the crowd milled around them. It seemed to put Hugh out considerably though and he sighed.

  “Look Orielle. I’m your principal. I can't….It’s not appropriate….”

  “Sorry Hugh,” she said sniffing and gathering herself. “I’d better go. I’ve got a bit of reading to do anyway.” She held up the book and notes and gave a quick weak smile. Hugh seemed to realise he was holding her arms and let go.

  “Right. See you soon then,” he said apparently relieved.

  “Yes. Bye,” she said wondering still what it was about her that apparently affected him so much. She decided to ask Amanda sometime. Or maybe Cathy at PWT might know something. Yes she’d ask Cathy next week. Cathy was early to mid-thirties, unmarried, seemed to have been there forever just about and to know everything about everyone.

  When she got home, she found a note from Georgie saying that Al's wife had had the baby, a little girl, and although she was rather small, mother and baby were doing very well. The note said that she and Jack were out visiting the hospital and would be back later after having dinner out. She'd put a little picture of a sun at the end with a smiling face. Happiness emanated from the short note. Orielle could imagine she was over the moon. Orielle herself spent a wholly boring Saturday afternoon and evening and the Sunday in her bedroom keeping out of the way of Georgie and Jack who were in and out all weekend. She read selected chapters of the book and Seb’s notes. But at the end of it she had a far better understanding of how to draw up a trust and the reasons for doing so and felt a slight glimmer of interest in the subject developing.

  But on Sunday night in bed, the Hugh moment came back to her. It didn't seem as though he was attracted to her, and she certainly wasn't attracted to him. But there was something odd there. The moment had been surreal. In fact rather like the previous night when Triss had appeared. Was she imagining things? Was she going completely mad? An ex-boyfriend, if you could call him that, who silently appeared and just as obscurely seemed to disappear, who seemed to be able to direct peoples’ movements. An enigmatic boss who seemed to see something in her that she herself was completely mystified about. Both things were dream-like and improbable. It must be her head, conjuring these things up from nothing, from no evidence whatsoever. She must get a grip on herself. She must stop this nonsense. For nonsense it must surely be.

  ORIELLE WENT INTO the office on Monday with renewed purpose, determined to shake off the phantoms stalking her and be more practical and less fanciful. A boss with a queer obsession about her indeed! What utter bunkum! A would-be boyfriend who’d run off at the slightest provocation and whom she was now investing with supernatural powers. Complete bilge! She’d have him remotely moving objects about next in her mind and teleporting to the far reaches of the universe. Get a grip Orie, she told herself. This is life here and now. What you can see and feel, hear, taste and smell. The faded paint on the wall of her small assigned room, the dust on this small desk in front of her, the shelf above it starting to bow under the weight of….

  “Hello Orielle. You’re in early again.” It was Seb, bursting with vitality and apparently ready to take the day’s challenges by the scruff of the neck, shake them vigorously and get the most out of them. Or that was the overwhelming impression he conveyed.

  “Well, I’ve got just the thing for you this morning. No actual tax problems involved. We’ll do that afterwards. Come on to my room.” And he hurried off cheerfully. Orielle squeezed out of the inadequate space between her chair and desk and then the even smaller space between the desk and the doorway and took off after him.

  “Right here’s the file.” Seb plonked it on his own leather-covered desk in front of her. It was a small insignificant file.

  “Right,” Seb said. “It’s not a large estate, not at all. The deceased left his estate in various percentages to various people, none actually close relatives. He had no children himself. No doubt to save a few shekels, he used a will writing firm to prepare the Will for him. A false economy as it turned out. These,” he held out a photocopy of the Will and pointed at a section, “beneficiaries died befo
re the deceased.” He’d marked the three beneficiaries with giant asterisks in his large rather artistic hand.

  “Spot the deliberate error and tell me what we do now! As you’ll see, there’s been a bit of correspondence but not much, mainly to write initial letters to the banks etc and get death values. And get the Grant of Probate. Also we’ve actually got in the majority of the assets by now. But that’s the easy bit. There hasn’t been time to explain to the executor in great detail what the problem with the Will is and how it’s going to affect the winding up of the estate. So have a look at it, then come back and we’ll go through it. Oh. And try to think logically. Logically,” he emphasised gleefully.

  Oh dear, thought Orielle as she pottered back to her room. She’d enjoy the challenge but she hoped she wouldn't make a total hash of it, failing to spot the completely obvious, having to admit defeat to Seb, more acceptable than with Hugh when she could almost never tell what he was thinking. He seemed to be extra inscrutable with her and it made her quite nervous. But what was she thinking. Slapped wrist. There was nothing there. Nothing to be imagined and built up into a….

  “Hi. Fancy a drink at lunchtime?” It was Cathy at her doorway.

  “Oh, yeah. Actually I was….yes that’d be nice. Great. See you later.”

  “Good.” And Cathy went off with a satisfied expression. Orielle hoped she didn’t have an agenda of her own but so what; Orielle herself did. While trying to ditch the fantasy, obviously a fantasy, that she had some secret meaning for Hugh, nevertheless she was pretty keen to find out anything she could. Why not? Gossip they said made the world go round.

  But back to the file. So the deceased, Edward Coppings, had left his estate in specific shares to people, not equally between them but in varying percentages. Some of them had died before Mr. Coppings did. So presumably their shares went to the rest. Didn’t they? Logic Seb had said. What would happen to their shares. Surely there must be something in the Will about the shares of any beneficiaries who failed to survive Mr. Coppings. But there wasn’t. The Will was barely a page long. She thought about her lectures in the Administration of Estates Act and the Wills Act. Linear descendants of the named beneficiaries who had survived the deceased would surely inherit. Wouldn't they? Actually no. Only if the beneficiaries themselves were issue of the deceased himself and they weren’t. She looked to see if S.33 of the Wills Act had been negatived, but it wouldn't make any difference anyway. The named beneficiaries weren't children of Mr. Coppings. He had had no children, therefore he had no linear descendants.