Stars Across the Ocean

by Kimberley Freeman

  No, I’m not going to phone him. I don’t know what will happen next. I can’t go back to Australia and leave Mum here doo-lally in a clinic, but nor can I stay: I have a life in Sydney. A husband, a job, friends.

  I return to the pile as the clouds return and the rain deepens outside. Coldness has seeped into me and as I flick the override switch on the heating timer, there’s a knock at the door. I open it curiously and see the cleaner standing on the other side.

  ‘I need to vacuum in here,’ he says.

  ‘Come in,’ I say. ‘But please don’t disturb the books and papers. Somebody has already dumped it all in the middle here.’

  He comes in, hitching his backpack vacuum cleaner over his shoulders. He’s a solid little nugget of a man with sandy curls. ‘I did that,’ he says.

  I am shocked by how casual he sounds. ‘What? Why?’

  ‘There was a storm about two months ago. A branch came through the window and everything was sitting on the desk getting rained on. I was the only one here.’ He shrugs. ‘I didn’t want her to lose anything. She’s a nice lady. Where has she gone?’

  ‘I … she’s unwell. I’m her daughter.’

  ‘Tell her I said hello.’

  ‘I will … Did she know that’s why you moved her things?’

  ‘Yes, of course. She thanked me. Gave me a bottle of wine. I don’t drink, so I gave it to my brother.’

  I wait near the door while he vacuums. I can see now that one of the windows has new, modern glass; not the dimpled old glass in the other panes. The cleaner vacuums carefully around the mess in the middle of the room, then gives me a smile and closes the door behind him. I return to the work, despondent. By eight o’clock all the books are back on shelves and I stand among a dozen knee-high piles of papers. Some are photocopies of journal articles and book chapters, some are priceless Victorian documents, some are random to-do lists; but they are all so jumbled together that I feel hopeless. Where to start?

  I pick up a wad of pages, stop the ones in the middle from slipping sideways, and sit at Mum’s desk to sort.

  An hour later, after coffee and a soggy bacon sandwich, I have imposed some kind of order on the chaos. Neat piles sit on Mum’s desk, and I take the time to go through the old letters pile, hoping to find the rest of the letter I found yesterday; the one from the woman to the child she couldn’t keep. But I have no luck and it’s after nine and time to go to see Mum, to remind her that her things weren’t thrown lovelessly into a pile; that somebody was saving them from water damage and that she has forgotten that too.

  •

  Mum is in good spirits when I arrive, keen to chat. She remembers very clearly the ‘lovely cleaner’ who saved her books after she’d left them piled on her desk while looking for something; the imaginary scoundrels who sullied her things have been forgotten. She sometimes repeats herself but seems mostly lucid, and she’s out of bed for the time being and sitting at the little table and chair set beneath the window. The curtain is drawn, hiding the view of the brown brick building next door. Mum is impatient to be out of the clinic and back home; she asks every nurse who comes in about it. A doctor arrives, and I sit back and watch them interact, and wonder what will happen to Mum. Can she go home? Somebody ought to be with her. Should that somebody be me? I have wanted a baby for so long that I have read every book on the topic of birth and child-rearing, and it is clear that if one has a child one stays home to meet all its needs. The responsibility with one’s parent is not so clear. Would Mum want me to give up my job? She has been a feminist trailblazer; has told me a thousand times that it’s important for women to work, not to be consigned to the domestic sphere, helping others. But what do I do when she’s the one who needs my help?

  ‘You know,’ she says to me as the doctor leaves, ‘I think they mean for me to stay here. They think I’m all over.’

  ‘You’re not all over,’ I say, stroking her hand soothingly. Then, thinking to distract her, I say, ‘Mum, I found an old letter. Or a page of one, anyway.’

  ‘I have lots of old letters,’ she says. It sounds dismissive but I can tell she is glad to have something else to think about.

  ‘“To my child whom I could not keep”,’ I say.

  Her brow twitches and I can see she is thinking so hard that it’s a physical effort. ‘That one …’ she says. ‘That is …’

  ‘It was only the first page. Is there more?’

  ‘There’s reams of it,’ she says. ‘It’s not a letter so much as an essay. A story. I became quite obsessed with it, trying to verify the dates and the people involved.’ Her eyes focus and refocus as she concentrates. ‘Bah! It keeps slipping away from me. As if the ideas are there and when I reach for them they escape down a hole. The letter is in two or three chunks. If I got interrupted reading it I’d leave it and then forget it …’ She smiles weakly. ‘This is awful. My brain …’

  ‘How about I try to find the pieces for you? Would that make you feel better?’

  ‘Yes. Remind me of their names. Something about a sparrow. Oh, and I have a memory of some Chinoiserie.’

  ‘What’s Chinoiserie?’

  ‘The Victorians loved Oriental art,’ she says, as though that explains everything. ‘Would you, Victoria? Would you find those pieces and put them back together? I wanted to write a paper about that letter, once I’d verified the people in it. Or publish it in my next book …’ She trails off. ‘I have notes towards a book somewhere.’

  ‘I can find those too,’ I say, understanding that what I am promising amounts to helping Mum find her memories, which are scattered and escaping from her. But Mum seems settled and happy, and so I don’t dare withdraw the promise.

  •

  The following morning I return to Mum’s office lighter in mood on account of a good night’s sleep. I am determined to go through all the papers, and find the rest of that letter. An hour of work and I am flagging. I need music, or coffee, or both. Silent repetition. Pick up papers, leaf through and squint – Do I need glasses? Perhaps I’ll follow that up back in Sydney … thoughts of Geoff. Sick regret. – then put them aside and go to the next wad. I rise and leave the office. There’s a water bubbler in the hallway and as I approach I notice a tall man standing there, filling up a plastic water bottle. I stand nearby and wait, and then he realises I am there and smiles at me, making a show of hurrying up. ‘Sorry,’ he says.

  He has a kind face, with pale blue eyes and soft, blond eyebrows. I think of Geoff, and how he doesn’t smile, and never looks kind any more. Was it always like that? I seem to remember him being gruff even in the beginning, and me treating it like some thrilling game.

  ‘Take your time,’ I say, but the kind-faced man is already screwing the lid of his bottle back on and making a gesture towards the bubbler. ‘It’s all yours,’ he says, and then paces off down the corridor.

  I bend to drink, and realise my neck feels tight and crooked from sitting at Mum’s desk bent over papers. When I return to the office, I go to Mum’s reading chair and move aside the pile of folders that sits on it. I have to pull the chair out away from the wall so I can recline it, and then I sit back and sigh a little, closing my eyes. In my mind’s eye, I see lines and lines of nineteenth-century handwriting. I take a moment to breathe and listen to my heart beat, try to relax my muscles.

  Then I open my eyes and reach down for the handle to fold the footstool back in. Instead of a handle, my fingers brush a puckered pocket in the side of the chair, the kind of place one might store magazines or remote controls.

  If I got interrupted reading it I’d leave it and then forget it.

  My hand darts into the pocket. Papers. I pull them out and a quick glance tells me it’s the same handwriting, the same letter. I flick to the end only to see that it is incomplete.

  I hesitate about taking it from the college. The document might be a hundred and fifty years old. But it might cheer Mum up to see it, so I slip it into the back of a sturdy book, wrap the book with rubber bands,
and tuck it into my bag to take to the clinic.

  •

  At the clinic, Mum’s bed is empty and at first I’m alarmed, thinking about her wandering. But then the nurse tells me Mum is with one of the doctors, having some X-rays, and I should go and have a coffee and come back later.

  ‘Not in the clinic cafeteria, though,’ she says, with the hard conviction of a fellow coffee lover. ‘Go to Ellie’s down the road.’

  I find the cafe one block from the clinic and sit in a quiet back corner with a double-strength latte and three sticks of sugar. One by one, I stir the sugar sticks into the liquid, then take a sip. Strong and sweet.

  I glance at the clock and think about calling Geoff to kill time, then remember I have the old letter. I take it from the book, unfold it and straighten it on the table in front of me, peering at the handwriting. Once I get the hang of how the s’s and the r’s are different, it isn’t too difficult to read. As I drink my coffee, and then another, I read.

  CHAPTER 7

  Moineau

  —led to your birth and ultimately to me losing you. I offer these words not as excuses, but as explanations. I write it all down in as much detail as I can remember, so that you will understand. You will be a woman one day, and you will know the unrelenting force of passion. They say we are creatures of emotion, as though emotion were a trivial thing to be dismissed. But my heart and my body have known feelings so mighty that they have overridden even God’s words. Men do poorly to imagine women weak. We have pounding oceans inside us.

  It starts with my Aunt Harriet, my father’s sister. I had always been fond of Aunt Harriet, and she of me. She was bold and bright, with wild brown curls and a laugh that could shake walls. Her husband, my Uncle Oswald, seemed small and pale beside her, like a male spider next to the large and busy female. But she loved him madly; her eyes shone every time she looked at him.

  When he died suddenly, late in the spring of the year I met Emile, my father insisted I travel south to keep her company for the summer. And so I set out to Millthorne, a tiny village in Dorset, to offer what comfort I could. By this time, it was just past the solstice. Bright days turned into long, warm evenings. I took two trains to get to Dorchester and then hired a carriage the rest of the way. I was tired by the travel, but enchanted with the countryside. We rattled down steep hills crowded on all sides by wild foliage – chestnuts and sycamore and oak – and navigated through crooked laneways paved with wildflowers and alive with glistening insects. I was used to the flat moorlands around Hatby, the grey streets and inert stone of the village. Millthorne seemed more alive somehow, wrought in warm colours and crowned with glittering leaves. The coach drew to a stop on a straight, quiet street as the afternoon shadows grew long. The coachmaster handed me down and a smiling middle-aged man in black livery approached. I presumed from his mourning gear that he was Aunt Harriet’s, and I was right. He introduced himself as Toby, Harriet’s second man, then took my trunk and led me down the street a little way and around the corner to my Aunt Harriet’s house.

  I followed him inside to the entranceway. It was dim, the lamps not yet lit. Toby deposited my trunk and rang the bell for the maid, while I pulled off my gloves and unlaced my bonnet. ‘Where will I find my aunt?’ I asked.

  ‘Jones will come for you in just a moment.’ His eyes were kind, but sad. ‘Your aunt has taken the loss … badly.’

  I imagined Harriet under a veil, her light snuffed out. Perhaps I hadn’t contemplated how difficult this visit might be until that moment. I had been fixed on getting out of Hatby, at stopping the endless discussion about whom my sister or I should marry, as though husbands could be meted out fairly to both of us the way cake is.

  Jones arrived then. She had been a faithful servant to Aunt Harriet for nearly twenty years, and usually travelled with her. We knew each other well. I handed her my bonnet and gloves and she touched my hand with her gnarled and worn fingers. ‘She’s in the drawing room. Don’t be surprised by what you see.’

  I nodded, and followed her through the dark corridor. She paused outside the drawing-room door, nodded to me once, then knocked quietly and opened the door.

  Don’t be surprised by what you see.

  Rather than my solitary aunt, slumped on the sofa all in black, I was greeted by a roomful of people. The curtains were drawn so it was too dark for a moment to find Harriet with my eyes, but she was most certainly not in black. Seven people in all sat in a circle around the table; all eyes were closed as a woman intoned strange sounds; soft moans.

  Jones leaned into me, her breath tickling my ear. ‘They are having a séance.’ Then she backed away and I stepped into the room properly, hands clasped before me. No aspect of my good breeding had ever taught me the appropriate behaviour for entering a séance, so I waited.

  At length, the moaning woman put up her head, almost as if she were sniffing the air. ‘A new energy has entered the room.’ Then she turned her gimlet eyes on me and my stomach chilled. ‘Who are you?’ she said.

  ‘I am Harriet’s niece.’

  Harriet’s eyes flew open then, and she called out, ‘Hello there, Little Sparrow,’ which was her favourite name for me, and she could not be persuaded to call me anything else. ‘We’ll be done in half an hour. Madame Azhkenazy is terribly close to making contact. Get Jones to show you your room and do close the door firmly as you go.’ Then her eyes were closed again, and Madame Azhkenazy had turned her terrible stare away from me. I backed out of the room, closing the door as Harriet had asked, and called for Jones.

  She led me up the stairs past at least five new portraits of Uncle Oswald, and then into a large room with a high wooden bed. The canopy and covers were all shades of white and cream, and at first I didn’t see the creamy-coloured cat nestled on the foot of the bed.

  ‘Off with you!’ Jones shouted at it, but I stayed her hand and brushed my knuckles gently across the cat’s head.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘His name is Basil. Thinks he owns the place.’

  ‘I don’t mind. He can stay in here. I like cats.’ We’d had many dogs and cats at Breckby Manor. There was something lovely about the way they loved me, just as I was.

  Basil rolled on his back and exposed his belly.

  ‘Looks as though he likes you too, ma’am,’ Jones said, plumping the pillows and making sure the curtains sat straight.

  I walked to the window and looked down on the street. A shop across the road was closing, the shopkeeper bringing in the last of the fruit crates and bolting the door. The inn next door to it was still quiet. I could hear evening birds and the sky was washing to pale blue–pink. Thatched roofs lined each side of the street, and a man walked an enormous dog along towards the millstream.

  ‘I shall leave you be, then, ma’am,’ Jones said. ‘Toby will bring up your trunk shortly. Supper at seven. Your aunt’s … friends should be gone by then.’ Jones left and closed the door, and I sat on the bed with Basil, rubbing his head until he purred loudly.

  I flopped onto my back and stared up at the canopy. I didn’t need to ask whom Aunt Harriet was trying to contact through the séance. Even though she must be feeling such terrible grief, I couldn’t help thinking how lucky she was to have loved the man she married. I was certain that neither my sister nor I would be so fortunate.

  •

  In the end, I didn’t see Harriet until breakfast the next morning. Jones brought me a supper tray when it transpired that Madame Azhkenazy needed the séance to continue until late, and I fell asleep while there was still light in the sky, so tired was I from travelling.

  The breakfast room was in the conservatory at the back of the house, lit through crowding trees by the morning sun. Harriet was there already, wearing a green house dress, her hair tied up under a yellow scarf.

  ‘Good morning, my dear. Would you like Cook to poach an egg for you?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I said, pulling out the wooden seat and sitting down. Sunlight fell on the table in front of
me.

  Harriet rang a bell, spread some marmalade on her roll, and fixed her gaze on me with a smile. ‘It is so good to see you, Little Sparrow.’

  ‘I share your feeling,’ I said. ‘I must say, I hadn’t thought to find you in such good spirits.’

  ‘Ha!’ she said, flapping her hand at me. ‘And I know you are not saying that with any judgement, which is why I like you, my dear. We understand each other.’

  A maid came in then with a fresh pot of tea, and Harriet asked for two poached eggs and some grilled ham for me. The maid took her time setting my place, during which Harriet and I remained silent. Like Harriet, I had never mastered the art of not caring what servants heard me say. I picked up a roll and buttered it while Harriet poured me tea. The first sip was heaven: hot and strong and malty.

  ‘Well,’ she said as the maid withdrew. ‘I am in good spirits. I am. As you can see, I am not wearing black. I refused to wear it at all. Black would mean he was gone, and he is not gone.’

  My smile froze a little on my face. ‘No?’

  ‘Yes, he is dead in the ground, and I will not hold his dear hand again …’ At this, her voice caught and she wobbled almost imperceptibly, but then she brightened again. ‘But his spirit is very close, Little Sparrow. I dream about him every night, you know. He says not to forget him. As if I could forget him!’