by C F Dunn
Tom gave a short laugh. “Now, that’s a first. I never thought I’d hear you say you give up when you’ve scented a kill.”
“Thomas!” Judy prodded him again.
“Well, it’s true. You should have seen Emma when she thought she was on to something – scary. Do you remember that assignment we were given? Way beyond most undergrads, but you wouldn’t give up until you’d completed it. I swear Dr Hilliard gave it to us just to see us squirm, the sadist. Now there’s someone who would know the answer. Can’t say I ever warmed to him. Took years before I stopped having nightmares about those supervisions. Heard he died, though – in a car crash, apparently. In the States.” His wife put a cautioning hand on his arm and indicated the pair of wide, bright eyes absorbing every detail from beside me.
“Sorry, yes.” When I didn’t answer immediately, concentrating on dividing the sandwich into quarters and sliding a segment onto Rosie’s plate, he cleared his throat. “I forgot, you were close to him at one time, weren’t you? Sorry,” he said again. I didn’t miss the frown and slight shake of Judy’s head. He must have told her something of my history.
“I’m sure he would have known,” I said, evenly, “but whether he would have shared the information is another matter. He wasn’t an easy man to deal with.”
“He gave you a hard time, didn’t he?” Tom said, all humour gone.
I grimaced. “You could say that. You saved my life.”
“That’s a bit of an exaggeration.”
I looked at him square on. “No, I don’t think so. Without you things might have turned out quite differently.”
His eyes drifted to my neck where my cross hung and he smiled. “I’m glad there was something I could help you with.”
Rosie and I were quiet on the way back home along the A47, each with our own thoughts. As we turned onto the Brooke road, she piped up from the back. “Mummy, what’s a YouEffO?”
“It’s short for Unidentified Flying Object. Mostly, people refer to UFOs in connection with alien spaceships or strange lights, but it can be anything seen in the sky that science can’t explain.”
“Like Daddy?”
I smiled. “Daddy isn’t an alien, Rosie, nor can he fly.”
“But science can’t explain him, Mummy – he said so.”
“Yes, but that’s only because he hasn’t found the answer yet, not that there isn’t an answer. When we can’t explain something, we say it’s preternatural.” I pulled into the entrance to a field where vivid green spikes of wheat punctured the earth, and let a white van pass on the narrow road, watching it warily, waiting to see the telltale flicker of studied non-interest in the driver’s eyes. He drove past without a second look, disappearing in a plume of diesel fumes around the corner, and I released the breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
“He can fly,” Rosie persisted, making her hand into a plane and flying it across my rear-view vision as we drew out and regained the centre of the road.
“What did you do with your sandwich?”
“I hid it in here.” She took the folded magazine from her bag and retrieved the dog-eared quarter with a bite taken from the corner and held it up for me to see in the mirror.
“Well done, darling. I know it’s not easy. Judy and Tom are kind, aren’t they?”
“I like Judy’s clothes and Tom is funny. Why did he save your life?”
I debated the wisdom of telling her anything to do with Guy and decided to stick to the bare essentials. “I had a difficult time at university for a while – before I met Daddy – and Tom helped me through it.”
“Why?”
“He told me about Jesus.”
She was thoughtful for a moment; then, “I like Jesus. And I like my magazine. Judy gave it to me.” She flapped it. “It says Heavenly Light.” She looked up. “Jesus is a heavenly light, isn’t he, Mummy?”
“He is indeed our light. What are you looking at?”
Her sunset head bent over the article spread on her knees, and with her finger under the bold headline and a look of deep concentration, she read, “A-roar-bore-a-lis.”
“A-whaty?” I slowed the car right down and took the near-hidden turning to our track between high hedges scattered with buds swollen with spring and ready to burst with the least encouragement of a warm day. The last daffodils withered on the banks, and over the noisy engine, a robin scolded.
“This,” and she held the magazine high enough so that I could see the glossy photo bumping and wavering in my rear-view mirror. “Look, see, Mummy, the sky’s on fire.”
I brought the car to a sudden standstill, and swivelled in my seat. “Rosie, let me see that.” I snatched the magazine from her outstretched hand. Ruby flames danced across the night sky beneath the heading: Aurora Borealis – Heavenly Light. I read the first paragraph, skipped the technical bit, scanned the rest. The article blurred, swam unsteadily. I remembered to breathe, and shook my head, refocusing. I looked at my daughter, searching for words. “Oh. My. Giddy. Aunt! Rosie, you’re a genius!” Unstrapping myself, I launched between the front seats in an ungainly sprawl and hugged her, child seat and all. “You’ve done it, Rosie. You’ve solved the mystery of the mortal fire. You clever, clever girl. You’re phenomenal!” She beamed up at me, bemused. “Let’s get home and tell Pat and Henry what you’ve discovered.”
“And Theo,” she reminded me.
“And definitely Theo,” I said.
“Aurora?” Henry angled the article to the dying light of day. “It certainly fits the description Nathaniel Richardson gives in the journal, even if there’s scant enough information.”
“I founded it,” Rosie announced with a degree of pride and a smattering of a challenge. “Mummy says I’m phe-nom’nal.”
“You found it, did you, Rosie? Well done!” Henry smiled down at her, while fending off Puppy’s attempts to bite his heels.
“Puppy, down! Sweetheart, please will you take Puppy outside and run off some of her energy?” Needing little encouragement, the pair dashed off. When I faced Henry again, he had resumed scanning the article. He looked up. “The only thing is that it’s unusual to see aurora in mid-summer and this far south.”
“But it is possible, isn’t it? I remember seeing it once when in Cornwall, and in East Anglia it’s traditionally known as Dancing Maidens or Dancing Girls, so it does occur at this latitude.” I tapped the entry in the journal. “And it was seen in the northern sky – Nathaniel thought it was the light from the torches carried by William’s rabble as they approached from the north, but Matthew said he couldn’t remember seeing many torches at all.”
“It’s not beyond the realms of possibility, certainly, although a red hue is more rare. Hmm – 1643.” He shook his head. “I’m pretty certain the Maunder Minimum began sometime around then; I’ll need to check.”
“Why? What’s that?”
“A period in the mid-seventeenth century noted for its lack of sunspots.”
“So…?”
“So it relates to solar activity, or lack of it. Solar storms on the surface of the sun discharge vast amounts of energy that give rise to aurora. Sunspots are indicators of that activity, so no sunspots…”
“… no aurora,” I concluded, my initial elation fading fast.
“They still occurred, but it’s more doubtful in the midgeomagnetic latitudes where we are now. But I’ll check; you never know. Strange, of all people, Dad might have been able to tell us. He lived through the period, after all.” He ran his hand over the scratchy growth of his new beard. “Why is it so important, anyway?”
“Intuition, Henry; cause and effect. You know I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“As a crusty scientist, I’m afraid I need a little more than intuition to come to any sort of conclusion.”
“In normal circumstances I would agree, and I’d bite off the head of any student of mine that failed to come up with a viable source to verify a claim. However…”
“This is hardly a normal
circumstance. So, is it by the pricking of your thumbs? Or merely clutching at straws?”
I grinned. “Possibly both, but the fact that it happened on the same night that Matthew was attacked might be relevant nonetheless. And I keep getting these words going around and around my head like a song I can’t shift: ‘Batter my heart, three-person’d God…’ Did he? Did God ‘break, blow, burn’ to make Matthew new? And if so, how? Why?”
“You know, for years I helped him search for answers to a question the context of which I didn’t fully understand. I can’t help feeling that we might have made better progress had he told me the full story.”
“Henry…”
“I know, I know, but it’s like knowing only half my father, and now he isn’t here for me to tell him how much I regret these last four years, and to get to know him better – and my little sister.” He angled his elbows, resting his hands on his thighs, his head bent. He grunted, slapped his palms down on his knees, and rose to his feet with a sigh. “No point in regretting the past, as Dad would say; it’s time to be getting on with the future. Do you think Beth would let me use her computer?”
* * *
“Flying angel!” I sang, balancing Theo on the socked soles of my feet and motoring him around above my head as I lay on my back. He waved his arms and I felt his rumbly laugh deep in his squidgy tummy. “One, two, threeeeee…” Bending my knees I launched him into the air and caught him in my arms on the way down, wrapping him tightly to me. His cheeks pink, he squealed for more.
“Mummy!” Rosie thumped in, depositing clods of mud.
“Boots, sweetheart.” She ran from the great hall and returned seconds later, one foot trailing a sock and the other bare altogether. “Mummy, Grandpa and me dug and dug and we dug…” she counted on her fingers, “… two hundred square…” She looked down at her toes, “… feet. Phe-nom-e-nal!” she exclaimed.
“Two hundred square feet? Golly, that sounds a lot.”
“It was,” Dad huffed, sweat darkening the collar of his shirt. “Couldn’t have done it without Rosie’s help, though; she did all the maths for me and wielded that spade like a sapper. Real trooper, this girl.” Did I imagine that, or did my father just wink at me? He ruffled her hair. “Did you know tha…” He broke off as my head jerked around at the distant sound of a car engine. “Em, are you all right?”
I listened, focused, until the grinding second gear confirmed it to be Henry returning from Stamford in my car. My pulse returned to its regular beat. “Sorry, Dad, you were saying?”
He appraised me from beneath bushy, sandy brows, now flecked with grey. “It doesn’t matter. Were you expecting someone?”
“Oh, only Henry and Pat,” I said lightly.
“Well?” I asked Henry no sooner than they crossed the threshold, Puppy yelping and bouncing around our feet. I supplied Pat with a hot drink and she went to join my father by the fire to thaw her bones.
“Well,” Henry began, leaning against the stone sink and nursing his own mug, “I couldn’t find any reference to aurora being noted in the July of 1643 – none, and I would have expected something, especially given the rarity of the colour. However,” he added, “the Maunder Minimum didn’t begin until 1645 and, despite the lack of sunspots, aurora continued to be observed during that period, so…”
“It’s possible.”
“Not likely, but yes,” he relented, “it is possible.” The puppy snuffled around the floor, looking for remnants of Theo’s lunch. I picked her up, stroking her soft ears as I looked from the kitchen window, and tried to imagine the scene that summer night. “If we accept that it was an aurora Nathaniel recorded,” I said slowly, “what significance might it have had on what happened to Matthew – scientifically speaking, that is?”
“Emma, there is nothing to connect the two events…”
“Except they occurred at the same time.”
“Nothing,” he repeated. “You are clutching at those straws again. Dad and I spent decades working on molecular changes, DNA, blood typing – the works – and no doubt he spent the previous three hundred years trying to figure it out. The fact is, nothing short of a miracle can explain what happened to him.”
“But that’s just it, Henry – Matthew is miraculous. Whatever caused him to be the way he is, he is a miracle. That’s why they were after him.” I sensed, rather than saw, the shift in colours behind me. I spun around. Dad stood in the doorway, empty mug in hand.
“Dad, we were just saying…”
“That Matthew is a miracle, yes, I heard. Why is your husband miraculous, Emma? And who were after him?”
My brain froze. Despite five years of evasive fabrication, outright lying came hard.
“We only meant that… I mean, Matthew is…”
“A genius when it comes to medical research,” Henry interposed. “That’s why he’s been headhunted, Hugh. It’s a miracle, given the genes he’s inherited.”
“I see.” He did, but not what we wanted him to think. He walked to the sink and washed his mug without further comment, leaving it upside down on the stone draining board to dry. Henry and I swapped glances. Dad dried his hands and turned around.
“Emma, I’ve been fiddling with the solar cell that powers your mobile. It should be more efficient now.”
“Right, Dad. Thanks.”
“I expect you will want to get on with your research – whatever that is. I’ll show you how to use it and then be on my way. Your mother will be wondering where I am. Come along.”
I followed him into the great hall and, sitting on the windowsill in the strengthening sun, he showed me the component he had fitted to the back of the mobile. “Give it a go,” he said. “Call Matthew.”
“I… don’t have his number.”
“You don’t have your husband’s mobile number? Really? Does Henry?”
“No, I don’t think so. The signal’s not very good where Matthew is.”
“And where exactly is that?”
“I can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t, Emma?” He waited, but I had nothing I could say to him that would appease his appetite for information. “All right, then, I’ll be blunt. Your mother thinks you must have had some difficulties between you. Is that so?”
I shook my head.
“Have you left him, Emma?”
“No, Dad!”
“Then where is he?”
“I’ve told you, I don’t know. He’s on a government project…”
“Don’t lie to me.”
Taken aback by his directness, I stuttered, “I-I’m not!”
“You all are – you, Henry, Pat. What are you all doing here? Why are you hiding? Why is it that every time you hear a floorboard creak, you jump? Why does my granddaughter never seem to eat anything and my grandson not feel the cold? And your arm – Beth swears that scald should have put you in A&E, and she’s seen enough kitchen accidents to know.”
I looked desperately at him. “I can’t tell you.”
“Can’t or won’t?” he repeated. With an effort he straightened stiff knees and stood looking down on me. “I understand if Henry wants to protect his son – I would do the same – but I won’t accept my own daughter lying to me, Em; not after everything we’ve been through these last years.”
He waited, but I merely looked at my hands, twisting the edge of my sweater into knots. “So be it. There is nothing you could say that would shock me. Nothing I couldn’t handle.” He found his car keys in his jacket pocket. “I’m sorry you don’t feel you can trust me. Please pay my respects to Pat and Henry.”
I listened until I could hear the car’s engine no longer. Leaning back against the stone, the sun’s captured warmth couldn’t dissolve the chill Dad had left. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him – the maxim Matthew had lived by all his life, and that had backfired with dire consequences when Henry discovered the truth. But, tell me, at what point do you tell someone and entrap them with the same lie that binds you? Dad would then feel o
bligated to protect Mum from the secret and yet another wall – invisible but as solid as stone – would be erected in their relationship. And where would it end – with Beth, Rob, and their children? Ripples would spread from Matthew’s epicentre until they reached the shore of unwelcome ears, and we would find ourselves in flight once more – scattered, disparate, lost.
I picked up the mobile, wanting at least to hear Dad’s voice, and switched it on. It blinked into life, a sliver of power in its charging battery. I held the solar cell to the light, remembering Matthew raising his face to the sun – recharging, taking on its strength, growing stronger. The mobile fell with a clatter to the floor.
“Henry!” I bellowed, sprinting from the great hall, colliding with him as he ran to find me, alarm spreading across his face.
“What’s the matter?”
“Henry, it’s the sun!”
Pat appeared behind him. “What’s wrong with the sun?”
But I was at the great south windows, pointing, incoherent words tumbling. “The sun.” I stabbed in its direction. Henry frowned. I flapped my hands, garbled out, “Sunspots. You said that sunspots are solar storms – they send out waves of energy.”
“Yes, but…”
“Energy, Henry. Aurora indicates solar activity. That night vast amounts of solar energy were released into the atmosphere, creating aurora.” I hunted around me, and spotting Rosie’s magazine, grabbed it. “Don’t you see?” I said, shaking it in his bewildered face. “The huge coronal mass ejections of March 1989 created enough geomagnetic disturbance to black out the entire state of Quebec. Matthew had a steel blade thrust into his heart during the aurora. He… earthed… the energy like a lightning conductor. It has to be that.” Face flushing, I waited, panting, as Henry’s expression went from disbelief to incredulity, colours pulsing like a cuttlefish.
“Delivering a massive shock to his heart? It should have killed him.”
“Yes,” I squeaked.
