by Kim Wilkins
Sacha entered the room then, set down a mug of tea in front of her. She wondered how much, if any, of the conversation he had heard. She gave him a strained smile.
“I’ll phone you Friday,” Adrian was saying. “And you’ll tell me what day you’re coming home.”
Although she hated it, she felt too guilty to disagree. “Okay.”
“I’ll speak to you then.”
“I love you,” she said.
“Yeah. Bye.” A click and he was gone. She replaced the receiver and sat back in her chair.
“Is everything okay?” Sacha asked.
She shrugged. “Fine.”
“Lovers’ tiff?”
“No. Everything’s fine.”
“Drink your tea. There’s a nice layer of snow out there, and you did promise me you’d build a snowman with me.”
She nodded, tried to look cheerful. “Okay, sure. After breakfast and a shower.”
“When the sun comes up.”
If the sun came up. At eleven o’clock, a heavy cloud layer kept full daylight at bay and threatened more snow. Somehow, despite her misery and anger, Maisie managed to get herself rugged up sufficiently to go outside. Sacha tried his best to keep the conversation light as they assembled a crooked snowman, and Maisie did her best to answer his questions and smile from time to time. But her heart was sick in her chest. Sick because Adrian had been hurt. Sicker because Cathy had betrayed her confidence. And sickest because she had to go home. She’d always known she’d have to go home eventually, but the longer she put it off, the easier she could pretend that this cool, damp journey into intrigue and psychic powers and desire was never going to end. Her joints ached with knowing that she had to return to her old life; as much as she loved Adrian, she didn’t want to go back to him. Not yet.
“Is there an old hat or something in Sybill’s cupboard?” Sacha was asking. “Something we can put on his head?”
“No,” Maisie said. “I threw out all the old clothes on the first day. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. He can stay bald.” Sacha’s eyes were bright and his cheeks pink from the cold. “Maisie, if you’re not up to this, we can just go back inside.”
“No, it’s fun.”
“Just which part of it are you enjoying?”
Maisie shrugged. “I…” Oh no, she was going to cry. She hated crying. “Damn,” she said, palming her eyes with her gloved fingers.
“Maisie?”
“Damn,” she said again, tearily, lowering herself to the ground and sitting on the snow. “Damn it. Damn it.”
Sacha crouched beside her, reached out to touch her cheek. “Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice cracking over her tears. “It’s all stupid.”
“It’s not stupid to feel something. Why are you crying?”
“Because Adrian and I had a fight and he wants me to come home, and I don’t want to go home,” she sobbed.
He put his arms around her and rocked her gently. She pressed her face into his sleeve and cried like a baby.
“Why don’t you want to go home?” he asked in a soft voice.
“Because I’ll be there forever.”
“Not necessarily. You’ll travel again. You might move somewhere different.”
“Home’s not just a geographical place.”
“Oh. I think I understand you now.”
Already the urge to cry was retreating, and now she felt foolish. She sat back and wiped her eyes. “Sorry. Sorry to be so stupid.”
“It’s not stupid. Maisie, why do you think it’s stupid to cry?”
She shrugged, wouldn’t answer.
He stood up, helped her to her feet. “Come on. Let’s go inside.”
“But it doesn’t look like a snowman yet,” Maisie said, surveying their work. It looked more like three misshapen blobs on top of each other, with poorly positioned twigs for arms.
“We can finish him another time.”
Later that evening, after a few more idle attempts to find the fourth diary piece, Maisie stood in the lounge room gazing out onto the snowy front garden. Their snowman cast a shadow in the dark, standing sentinel out the front. Sacha was watching television, but keeping one eye on her. She knew she’d been distant all day. Not just for Adrian’s sake, but for her own. Her desire for Sacha was more than half her problem, and having him there, being so concerned and caring, was compounding her misery.
The phone rang and Maisie sat in her chair to answer it.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Maisie, it’s me.” Cathy. Maisie felt her temperature rise. But Sacha was sitting right there watching the TV, and she was hardly going to reveal the details of the conflict in front of him, seeing as how he was so thoroughly implicated.
“Hi, Cathy. How’s uni?”
“Good. How are you going? No more scary stuff?”
“Not really. Couple of weird dreams.” She could hear that her own voice was strained over the top of her anger.
“Well, do you want to come to York for a few days? Get away from it all?” Cathy asked. “I’m getting lonely again. When classes start I’m always reminded that everybody else has friends and I don’t.” She laughed lightly. Innocently. With no idea how despised she was.
“Sure, hang on.” Maisie covered the receiver with her left hand and turned to Sacha. “Sacha, can I get a lift to Whitby with you in the morning?”
“Of course,” he said.
“I’ll be there tomorrow morning,” Maisie said to Cathy.
“Hang on. I’ve got a class tomorrow morning. I thought you might like to come down on the weekend.”
“I’m busy on the weekend.”
“Okay, I’ll be back in my room by about three o’clock. Meet me then?”
“Sure.” Maisie relished the chance to let Cathy have the edge of her anger.
“And you’ll stay a couple of nights?”
“I’ll see how I feel.”
If Cathy sensed something was wrong, she didn’t let on. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
“Bye.” Maisie hung up.
“Going to see Cathy?” Sacha asked.
“Yes.” Going to sort her out.
“That should be fun.”
“Yeah. Heaps of fun.”
Because she was in York hours earlier than she needed to be, Maisie found herself wandering around the shops looking for a present for Adrian. She knew it was a peace token, a way to ease her own guilt, but it suddenly seemed very important that she prove to him that she loved him. It was only when she whipped out her credit card to spend £280 on a black suede jacket for him that she realised just how guilty she must be. She didn’t even have a job to pay her credit card bill with when she got home, but all those worries could wait. Alleviate guilt now, pay later. She found a post office, packaged the gift up and sent it airmail to Australia with a hastily written note:
Adrian,
I saw this and couldn’t resist it. Love you
heaps, always and forever. M xxx
Maisie spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around frosty York, planning in her head what she was going to say when she saw Cathy. She had never been particularly good at confrontations. But Cathy had it coming to her. By ten to three, when she walked up to Cathy’s place, she was a wreck. Angry, tired, frustrated, teary again. What was happening to her? Evil spirits couldn’t make her leave the house but an argument with Adrian could turn her into a gibbering mess. The front door was ajar so she let herself into the boarding house and walked up the stairs to Cathy’s room. Knocked at the door.
“Maisie!” Cathy had opened the door and grabbed her in a hug before Maisie knew what was happening. “Come in. It’s great to see you.”
“Hi,” Maisie said, extricating herself from the hug, not cracking a smile. She closed the door behind her. Didn’t sit down.
Cathy was searching on her book shelf. “I’ve got something for you.” She pulled a folded piece of paper out of a book and handed i
t to Maisie.
Maisie shoved the piece of paper in her bag without looking at it. Probably some new age ten commandments where “Thou shalt not keep a secret” was top of the list.
“What’s up?” Cathy asked. “You look upset.”
“What did you tell Sarah about me and Sacha?”
Cathy’s blue eyes widened. A flush crept up her face. “What do you mean?”
“Sarah. Your sister.” Maisie worked to keep her voice cold. “She ran into Adrian in the supermarket and told him I was in love with somebody else.”
Cathy still didn’t answer. Obviously, she hadn’t anticipated that she’d be caught out.
“Have you any idea how much trouble you’ve caused me?” Maisie asked.
“Oh, Maisie, I’m so sorry,” Cathy blurted at last. “I mentioned it in passing – just that you had a bit of a crush on this guy – and Sarah should never have…I’m going to kill her. Honestly, I am.”
“If you’d never told her anything, she couldn’t have passed it on to Adrian. And don’t give me this ‘mentioned it in passing’ bullshit. You and your sister – with all your new-age-hippy-bullshit-love-everybody crap that you go on with – you and your sister got so involved in gossip you didn’t even realise you could hurt someone. Not very fucking Zen is it?”
“Maisie. Maisie, I’m so sorry,” Cathy said again, reaching a hand out to touch her arm. Maisie flinched away from her, took a step back. “Was Adrian really angry?”
“I’ve been ordered to return home.” Maisie’s voice broke. She did her best not to cry. “He wants me home and I’m not finished here yet.”
“But Maisie, what are you doing here anyway? You’d be better off at home. You’ve –”
“Shut up!” Maisie shouted. “How dare you tell me how to run my life?”
“Now don’t get yourself all worked up,” Cathy said. Her reasonable tone was as intolerable as fingernails on a blackboard.
“You’re incredible. Do you understand what I came here to tell you? You betrayed my trust. You are not my friend.”
“Maisie, please try to calm down.”
“No,” Maisie spluttered, and the tears came and she could feel her whole body grow hot with anger. “I won’t calm down.”
“I’ve said sorry, what more do you want me to say?”
“Goodbye,” Maisie said. “I’m going back to Solgreve.”
“Come on, Maisie. Let me make you a cup of tea and we’ll talk reasonably, and you can stay over. You can’t have come all this way just to yell at me.”
“I did. And now I’m going to get on the next bus home. And I never want to see you again. And next time you talk to your sister tell her I never liked her. I never liked either of you, and if you weren’t the only person in this hemisphere that I know, I would never have called you.” Maisie wrenched the door open and stalked out.
“Jeez,” Cathy said in an exasperated gasp. “No wonder you’ve got no fucking friends.”
Behind her, Maisie heard the door slam.
CHAPTER THIRTY
A bus was leaving for Whitby just as Maisie arrived at the train station. She hopped aboard, leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. In a few minutes they were pulling out into traffic. Cathy was right. It was no wonder she had no friends and it was a long way to come just to yell at her. Now she had a long bus ride home to contemplate what she’d done.
About half an hour into the trip she remembered the piece of paper Cathy had given her. She pulled it out of her bag and unfolded it. It was a photocopy of a page from a book: Late Medieval Catholic History in England. The entry that Cathy had copied for her was headed, “Aaron Flood.” She gasped and scanned it quickly.
Aaron Elijah Flood, b. 1486, d. unknown. Born in England and studied divinity and medicine at University of Cologne. Appointed court secretary to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Germany, where he met Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim. Travelled to Rome in 1501. Ordained in Catholic Church 1508. Rose quickly to cardinal under Leo X. Had many serious disagreements with the pope, who demoted him by stages between 1518-1520. All accounts hold that Flood was eccentric and uncontrollable. He refused to give up his red cardinal’s dress, even when sent to Solgreve Abbey, North Yorkshire. Finally excommunicated in 1521. No records of his life exist beyond his excommunication.
Maisie folded the paper carefully and turned it over and over in her hands. The same Flood? He told Virgil he had been born in the same year as Agrippa, and here was confirmation that they had been contemporaries. But how could he still be alive in 1794? And if he was still alive then, could he still be alive now?
Her hands stilled. Please, not that.
But she had seen too much weird stuff to dismiss it as an impossibility. Now she was more desperate than ever to find Virgil’s letter. She gazed through the window of the bus. The moors were speeding past under the darkening sky. A feeling of weariness settled over her. What did it matter? What did it matter what had happened over two hundred years ago? What did it matter how Sybill had died? She was dead and knowing wouldn’t bring her back. What did it matter what mysterious secret was being kept in Solgreve, because in a mere few weeks she would be back in the sunny sub-tropics, under aching blue skies, and the village would seem like the furthest place in the world from her. She no longer had Cathy as a friend here. She knew she should stop seeing Sacha. The cat didn’t even really like her. Cathy’s words came back to her: What are you doing here anyway? You’d be better off at home. Tired nausea stirred in her stomach. Damn, what if Cathy was right?
By the time the bus pulled in at Whitby it was dark. Maisie thought about dropping in on Sacha but decided against it. A few days without seeing him would do her good. So she was surprised when she stepped off the bus and headed for a taxi, to hear him calling her.
“Maisie!”
She looked around. His van was parked around the corner from the bus station. He had rolled down the window and called out. Bewildered, she walked towards the van.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“Get in. I’ll explain on the way.”
“On the way where?”
“To Solgreve.”
“You don’t have to give me a lift. I can catch a taxi.”
“Just hop in. It’s cold with the window down.”
She walked around the front of the van and got in. “How did you know I’d be here?”
“Cathy called me.”
“Cathy?” Maisie was stunned. “What did she say?”
He started the van and pulled into the main street. “She said that you were really upset when you left and that she was worried about you.”
“Did she tell you why I was upset?”
“She said you two had a fight.” He glanced at her quickly. “Is that right?”
“Yes. I can’t believe she phoned you. How did she even know your number?”
“I’m the only Lupus in the phone book.”
“I can’t believe she phoned you,” Maisie said again. “I’d have thought she’d realised she’d interfered enough. Bitch.”
“Temper.”
“Yeah, whatever.” Maisie leaned back in her seat, arms crossed in front of her.
They drove in silence for a while. Maisie stared out her window, boiling with anger, squirming with embarrassment. Cathy had probably sent Sacha to pick her up just to assuage her own conscience. Maisie hated that Sacha had been brought into such a petty, trivial quarrel. It demeaned him.
“Maisie?” Sacha ventured when they were about halfway home.
“Yeah?” Wary. Trying to be cool.
“Cathy told me what you fought about.”
Vertigo. “She what?”
“She told me.”
“What did she…what did she say?”
He kept his eyes straight ahead, and Maisie realised, horrified, that he was embarrassed. “That Adrian’s upset with you because of me.”
“That’s right,” Maisie said quietly.
“That she told her sister you and I were…you know.”
“That’s right,” Maisie said again. Couldn’t think of what else to say.
“Well, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. You’ve done nothing.” Absolutely nothing. “I don’t know where Cathy got the idea from.”
He said, “Mmm,” in a non-committal way and kept driving, silent. All her weariness, all her yearning seemed to be rising like a huge bubble in her throat. She felt she would scream. Instead, she picked at her fingernails by the dashboard light, hating them for being all bitten and ragged. It had started sleeting lightly outside. When they pulled into St Mary’s Lane, it had turned to snow.
“Let me come in and make you a cup of tea,” Sacha said.
“No, really, Sacha. I’m so embarrassed about this. I don’t want to put you out any further.”
“Please, Maisie. Let me come in.” He parked the van and turned the engine off, turning to her. “I know you’re acting cool because of your fight with Adrian, but Cathy and her sister and Adrian and all the gossip between them aren’t really anything to do with us. With you and me.” Gently, he pressed a finger into her chest and then his own. Her skin started to swarm with bright, warm colours.
“Okay,” she said, “come in.”
She led him inside and he went to the kitchen while she lit a fire in the lounge. She joined him in the kitchen a few minutes later. The kettle had boiled and he was pouring water into the teapot. The bubble was rising in her throat again. The tiny movement of the tendons under the skin of his hand as he replaced the teapot lid made her ache. Weary. Yearning.
Don’t cry again.
He reached for two mugs. Turned to her. “Want sugar?” he asked. “I’ve forgotten how you have it.”
She found herself staring at his lips, at that tiny, flat space. She kept staring and he didn’t say anything. She reached out her right hand, index finger, slowly. Pressed the tip of her finger to his lip.
“Maisie,” he said. Like that. No tone.
She let her hand drop to his neck. His skin was warm. Some kind of mad courage had seized her. She leaned in, face up to kiss him. Mortifying her, he flinched away, took two steps to the left.
