Writ in Water

by Natasha Mostert

  ‘Delightful.’

  ‘It was bad between them as children. And with Louisa so obviously preferring Richard to Adam—well, you can imagine.’ She made a gesture with her hand.

  Justine looked her full in the face. ‘I want to ask you something very personal. If you don’t want to answer, I will understand. And I apologise in advance.’

  Pascaline tilted her head quizzically to the side. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Harriet Buchanan said you and Adam had had an affair. Is that true?’

  ‘Poor Harriet.’ Pascaline smiled sadly. ‘She adored Richard. And then something happened that made her think Adam and I were involved. You see, Adam knew Richard was beating me. He had to take me to hospital once. Adam drove me there and then he went back home, and it was bad for Richard. Harriet was horrified by what had happened and jumped to all the wrong conclusions.

  ‘But, to answer your question: no. Adam and I never had an affair, Justine. Did I care for him? Yes. Like you would for a friend. And I was grateful to him. After he beat Richard up, things became easier for me. Richard backed off. My life was better.’

  ‘Forgive me, but… why did you stay with Richard?’

  ‘I still ask myself that question every day. Was I still in love with him? The truthful answer is that I don’t know. I had enough money of my own. I could have left him at any time, but I didn’t. And even after all these years I still don’t know why. It doesn’t make me feel good about myself, that I can tell you.’

  ‘Did Louisa know about the abuse?’

  She smiled wryly. ‘If Louisa knew, she never let on. Richard was careful—he usually stayed away from my face. If I hadn’t broken my rib that night, Adam wouldn’t have known, either. But I did talk to the priest once and he might have raised the issue with Louisa. Those two were close.’

  ‘The priest? Reverend Wyatt? Did he help you?’

  Pascaline gave a one-shouldered shrug. ‘There wasn’t much he could do, I suppose. But he was a very good listener, I remember that. Very good, indeed.’

  ‘What about Harriet?’

  ‘Harriet knew, but Harriet didn’t have much sympathy for me. Probably thought I deserved it. She thinks I’m a witch, you know. The broomstick and pointed hat kind.’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘Oh, I am. The thing is, she may be right.’ Pascaline suddenly laughed. ‘Don’t look so alarmed. It’s just that I do sometimes have a very strong feeling about people and I can sometimes sense things that are about to happen.’

  ‘Visions?’

  ‘Not really. It is difficult to explain. Let’s just say that at the time of the Inquisition I would probably have ended up on a stake.’

  She suddenly took Justine’s hand and enfolded it with both her own. ‘I have such a strong feeling about you, Justine. I had it from the moment I saw you. I can’t describe it, but I know it was meant that you come here today.’

  It was time to ask the one question that mattered most. Justine took a deep breath.

  ‘Why did he kill him?’

  Pascaline sighed. ‘Who knows what really happened that night? Me, I think it was a matter of hate building up between them. A long, slow process and then, one day, it reached breaking point.’

  ‘But it was not premeditated.’

  ‘I don’t think so, no. The weapon, you know, makes it seem unlikely. Even the police said so. But the problem is, Adam had threatened Richard once before in front of witnesses. Had threatened to kill him, in fact. At the time, no one paid any attention—we all say stupid things when we are angry. But when Richard was killed, of course everyone remembered those words. Louisa killed herself soon afterward.’ Pascaline suddenly pressed her fingers against her forehead.

  Justine reached out her hand. ‘Pascaline, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t make you go through this.’

  ‘No. Don’t worry. I’m all right. You said you wanted to show me something. What is it?’

  Justine opened her bag and extracted the picture of the wolf on the staircase. She placed it carefully on Pascaline’s lap. ‘Do you understand this? Can you explain this to me? I don’t know why, but I feel that this wolf is connected to Adam Buchanan somehow. I know it sounds completely crazy but—’

  Pascaline stared at the picture. ‘Adam has a tattoo of a wolf—right here.’ She touched the inside of her wrist.

  ‘A tattoo? Are you sure?’

  ‘Bien sûr.’

  ‘A tattoo like this?’ Justine was on her feet now, frantically trying to rid herself of her jacket. ‘Like this?’ she asked again and pushed up the short sleeve of her blouse as far as it would go.

  A sharp intake of breath. ‘Yes. Like that. Exactement. And the snake, too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yes, Wepwawet. And Ouroboros.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You don’t know what they mean? But you have them on your shoulder?’

  ‘I had these done years ago. I just liked the way they looked, that’s all. I was a teenager. I had wanted an eagle and a Union Jack, but then I spotted these on the chart in the tattoo parlour and changed my mind.’

  ‘Wepwawet.’ Pascaline’s voice sounded almost dreamy. ‘The Egyptian wolf god. Adam chose it because he is the “opener of doors”.’ Her fingertips were cool as she touched her fingers to Justine’s shoulder. ‘And the snake—Ouroboros. A gnostic symbol, this one. A sign of rebirth. Of reincarnation.’

  The clouds were moving across the sun and the pretty feminine room with its fresh colours and white wicker furniture was suddenly in shadow. Pascaline’s face seemed pallid, her red hair a bright slash in the gloom. When she spoke again, her voice was very gentle. ‘You must be tired, Justine.’

  ‘Tired?’

  ‘This immense longing you have inside you. This yearning for something you cannot express. I wonder what it must be like to feel such hunger. You’re sickening of it, aren’t you?’

  Tears were pricking Justine’s eyelids. She never cried after Jonathan’s death. Depression, yes. She knew all about depression. Every day it perched on her shoulder like a dusky owl. But no tears. Now they were leaving the corners of her eyes and, when she placed her hand against her cheek, her palm was wet.

  And she was scared. She didn’t understand any of this.

  ‘I should go.’ She looked at Pascaline almost fearfully.

  Pascaline did not try to stop her from leaving. But as they reached the front door, she placed her hand on Justine’s arm.

  ‘Adam believed we all have a soul mate. That each of us is travelling through many lives with a map of time clutched in our hands, waiting for that one moment when our timeline will intersect with the path of the lover we’re destined to meet.’

  She paused. ‘I have the strongest feeling that you will not fail in your search, Justine.’

  ‘I’m not looking for him.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Justine shook her head. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this exhausted. ‘Thank you. Thank you for talking to me.’

  ‘I hope it was of help to you.’ Pascaline’s lips brushed her cheek. ‘Stay in touch, my new friend. And when you find him, tell him I think of him fondly.’

  SEVENTEEN

  THE WATCHER closed the book he was reading with a sense of disgust. What a complete waste of time.

  He loved books. They had always provided inspiration. And he prided himself on his exquisite taste in literature. Of course, he wasn’t above reading a good commercial suspense novel every now and then. It helped him relax. But these days your average thriller seemed to be only about the author’s ability to think up bizarre ways of making people meet their death. The book he had just finished had a dead body on every second page. Flagellated bodies. Flayed bodies. Bodies impaled upside down. Eyeballs pickled in jars. Victims devoured by rats while still alive. You could almost feel the writer straining to stretch his mind to come up with ever more innovative and twisted ways to die.

  People thought thri
ll deaths were common, but in fact, they were not. Murder was certainly commonplace, as was indiscriminate killing, but for every Jeffrey Dahmer who decided to stock his fridge with human steaks, there were thousands of ordinary people walking around like ticking time bombs. People who were frustrated, greedy, despairing, drunk. Good people who simply snap. The harassed father who suddenly decides to shoot the employer who has fired him. The abused wife who harbours ideas of poison. The drug addict who turns savage in order to feed his habit.

  The man who succumbs to anger and kills his brother .

  Surely the possibility that the person sitting opposite you at the breakfast table might one day inexplicably plunge into madness was a far more terrifying prospect than the unlikely event of ever confronting a monster? When his own father had tried to shoot him, his mother and his sister one ordinary weekday morning as he was about to leave for school, there had been no warning. One moment he stood opposite a man he loved and admired. And the next he looked into eyes rinsed of sanity. Only afterward, after his father had taken his own life, had they learned about his disastrous financial investments. But he always knew that the explanation was not as simple as that. And it would be fair to say that his father’s descent into insanity had triggered his own interest in madness and its connection to evil.

  Relatives used to say he had handled the trauma well. Only nine at the time, he was a placid little boy who never mentioned what had happened. But the pitying glances from his schoolmates made him cringe. The constant attention from teachers and relatives was terrifying. His mother became cold and distant. He struggled with the knowledge that he might have been able to prevent his father’s suicide. He was convinced there must have been a sign. If only he had paid more attention. If only he had observed his father more closely. If only he had been a watcher. If his watcher’s skills had been developed in those days, he might have sensed the fault lines originating deep within his parent’s troubled subconscious.

  And it was as though the experience of that day had caused something inside him to break, evening out all his emotions. He experienced no highs and no lows. He moved through life and left no hint of turbulence in his wake. If he wanted to feel passion, excitement, lust for life, he had to find it elsewhere; in someone else’s life. And no one’s life provided more fascination than Adam Buchanan’s.

  Unlike the other residents of Ainstey, with their avid lip-smacking inquisitiveness, their prurient curiosity, the Watcher was able to appreciate the awful aesthetics of Buchanan’s crime. In one split second Buchanan’s reptilian brain had taken over and had caused him to lift his hand with deadly consequences; a devastating impulse cutting cleanly through all the restraints of intelligence and upbringing. How does it happen? What was it like to experience emotions so devastatingly passionate?

  The Watcher’s own life was blancmange; smooth, uncratered. His feelings were flattened and his emotions tepid. He recognised that his compulsion to be a watcher was not only rooted in his quest to study the seeds of madness but was also a longing to live vicariously through the lives of others. By observing closely, by acquainting himself with the smallest details of the lives of those he chose to play with, he became them. Their passions became his passions. Their desires sparked something in his own fallow heart. Watch them with great attention, observe the observable and it will give you access to the jagged rhythm of their thoughts.

  Sometimes he’d walk down the placid streets of Ainstey and look at the people passing him on the street and for one split second it would be as though the tops of their heads had been sliced off and he could see right into the dark wormy hollows of their brains. Mrs Chapman eating her clotted cream scones at Duke’s Tearooms; young Peter Smith on his paper rounds; Mr Bishop leaning over the counter of his hardware shop—all of them carrying inside the grey-white grooves of their brains that devastating ability to lash out. Deep in the amygdala flowed dark currents that could turn into a vortex of violence in the blink of a startled eye.

  He was not without guilt himself. But he had had no choice. She had discovered him watching, and had recognised him. Threatened to go to the police. His survival had been at stake. Survival was the primal imperative. Survival had nothing to do with insanity.

  He pushed the book away from him and stretched. He glanced at his watch. It was approaching nine o’clock. Still early.

  Maybe he should go for a drive. Get some fresh air.

  Maybe he should go to Paradine Park.

  He knew he was breaking one of the rules of the game. A single visit every seven days. That was all he allowed himself. Otherwise observation would turn into obsession. Obsession led to disaster. He had visited Paradine Park only four days ago, so he wasn’t permitted another visit until Sunday.

  But he really, really wanted to see her again.

  As he pondered the dilemma he drummed his fingers on the table. Then he came to a decision. Life was short. Sometimes an indulgence—a treat—was a positive thing. He wouldn’t stay long, he promised himself.

  • • •

  HER VISITS to Harriet and Pascaline Buchanan had left Justine drained. Traffic was predictably heavy and it seemed to take forever before she managed to leave London behind. By the time she drove through the gates at Paradine Park and turned the MG’s nose up the avenue of beech trees, night had long fallen.

  The first thing she did was to build a fire in the library. The second was to pour herself a glass of whisky. Only after emptying the glass did she go upstairs to run a bath.

  As she undressed she caught sight of herself in the mirror. For a moment she hesitated. Then she turned sideways and tightened her fist so that the skin of her upper arm grew taut.

  Wepwawet and Ouroboros. She remembered the day they were inked into her skin. She had just turned sixteen and had walked into the parlour scared but determined. Her friend Caroline was looking on, wide-eyed. In her hand she had an ice-cream cone. A strawberry one. Strange how she was able to remember that detail still.

  At first she had considered having at least one of the designs needled into her cheekbone, but the tattoo artist—a surprisingly ascetic-looking man with long David Copperfield-type fingers—had lost his nerve and had, thank God, persuaded her to have them done somewhere where they would not be as conspicuous. The whole thing had been an exercise in defiance, one of a long list of things she had thought of to irritate her parents. She certainly had never given any thought as to what the two symbols might mean.

  Somewhere out there was a man who was carrying the exact same images on his own arm…

  It was coincidence. That was all it was. It would be ridiculous to try and attach any deeper significance to what was only a freakish twist of chance. But as she turned away from the mirror and climbed into the bath, she found herself clasping her fingers to her shoulder protectively.

  God, she was tired. She lay in the hot water, her eyes fixed unseeingly on the ceiling. She was deliberately trying to keep her mind blank, but the images of the day kept crowding in on her. Harriet Buchanan’s dimpled fist and clammy hand. A good family, Ms Callaway. I’m sure Reverend Wyatt told you that. But one bad apple. You know how it is. The sweet smell of flowers in Pascaline’s house and the stains of lily pollen on the tablecloth. I wonder what it must be like to feel such hunger. You’re sickening of it, aren’t you?

  She must have drifted off. As her eyes snapped open, she noticed immediately that the water had turned from hot to lukewarm. How long had she been lying here? For a few more moments she listened, trying to pinpoint what had woken her.

  ‘Hello?’

  Silence.

  She hoisted herself out of the bath and padded to the bathroom door. The passage outside was dark. She poked her head out of the door. The passage stretched out ahead of her, empty.

  There was nothing there. She was being ridiculous. She was overtired and should get herself to bed. But maybe she should go downstairs and pour herself one last drink. Just to help her relax. She towelled herself dry and slip
ped into a long-sleeved nightshirt.

  The Johnnie Walker was in the library. She filled her glass and drank deeply.

  Glass in hand, and feeling nicely blurred, she approached the bookshelves lining the wall. Her eyes wandered across the titles without much interest. Further Wanderings Mainly in Argyll by one M.E.M. Donaldson. Next to it De Granville’s Travels to St Petersburg, volumes I and II. Three massive red tomes carrying the title The Chiefs of Grant.

  Pushed in between The Hunting and Harriers by H.H. Bryden and The Queen’s Hounds, written by someone carrying the faintly comical name of Lord Ribblesdale, was a book not bound in leather or cloth. It was a large coffee table-sized book with a glossy paper cover, and the title on the spine read Namibia: Portrait of a Desert Country.

  The first thing she noticed as she opened it was the signature in the top left-hand corner of the title page. Adam Buchanan.

  The signature was black and strong, the capital B towering over the rest of the letters. She placed her fingers on top of the boldly written name and the sensation that swept through her was so strong, so overwhelming, that she snatched her hand away. She felt as though she were on the threshold of making a long sought-after discovery, if only she had a brave enough heart and an unflinching mind.

  Hardly breathing, she turned the first page.

  It was a book featuring a series of stunning desert-scapes. These were images of a land punished by the sun. Dead mountains with rocks the colour of fire. Sand dunes glimmering with light. Glittering gypsum plains and eerie fog-wrapped beaches. A forest of petrified tree trunks, which, according to the sparse text printed below the picture, was 200 million years old.

  It was beautiful. Every image was exquisite. But it was also dreadful. These were scenes of aching desolation, of an emptiness so vast and so barren it chilled the heart and numbed the brain. Many of the pictures exhibited an almost feverish quality. The red-rimmed dunes, the cobalt sky—they seemed alien, as though they were not of this planet. And the names were magical as well: Khorixas, Omaruru, Mukarob, Ai-Ais, Skeleton Coast.