"He's quite a character," agrees Veronica, "if you can just ignore the bad language and his terrible table manners. He reminds me a bit of Monty Bradport."
"Why? Did he have bad table manners?" asks Bella.
"Yes. And the language to go with it."
"I was amazed when he got you playing the piano. I didn't even know you could."
"And Pat working the pedals," laughs Rat.
"Cheek! What did you think it was there for?"
"I don't know; it's always been there. What were you and Pat talking about?"
"Oh, her ex-husband, mostly."
"Really? You're privileged, she never mentions him to me."
"Young Bluebell's a bright spark," opines Rat, taking out his pipe. "Be a looker, I shouldn't wonder, when she's older. I think Reg Woodcock was rather taken with her too."
"Bit of a little madam, if you ask me," says Veronica. "Has he taken that animal away?"
"Yes."
"Good."
"If you don't mind," says Bella, trying to appear casual, "I think I'm going to take a little walk before I turn in; clear my head a bit."
"What, now? It's blowing half a gale out there."
"I don't mind, I like the wind. I like to feel it on my skin. Anyway, I won't be long. Don't wait up for me."
"Bella, you hate the wind, and the dark. You've always hated it."
"Well I must have changed then, mustn't I? People do change you know."
"Then at least put a coat on; it might rain. There's still one in your wardrobe."
"I'm fine. Bye."
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Rammm," intones Bella.
There is no other sound but the sigh of the wind and the nearby churring of a nightjar. Below her, in the pre-dawn light, the furze and the heather and the thickets of birch and alder along the Winterborne are as yet but roughly sketched in shades of grey. Only the Stones themselves have form: hard, black silhouettes against the night sky.
"Yammmmm."
The sun, when it rises, is the only coloured thing. It climbs slowly out of the grey sea and touches the Stones, giving each one a long, pale shadow that reaches far out over the heath.
"Hammmmmmmm."
Bella, too, has her shadow. It is the shadow of Padmasana, the lotus seat. She sits straight and still upon the altar stone, her long legs folded like hairpins, her hands, palms uppermost, resting upon her knees, the tip of each index finger forming a circle with the thumb. She may appear to be gazing across the harbour to the Bittern Hills, but she sees only with her inner eye which is the eye of the soul. As the sun climbs out of the sea and begins to bathe the world in light so does her soul also rise. The essential, the true, the immortal Bella passes upwards through never so many chakras, casting off, as she does so, all earthly passions until at last she is free. Free to fly upwards in joy, like the skylark, leaving the poor clay that is her earthly body far below.
"Ommmmmmmmmmmm," she chants, as higher and still higher her spirit soars until at last she finds all the broad lands of Tenstone laid out like a map beneath her. Away to the west she can see the meandering Wimble with its willows and water-meadows and the long beech hanger that follows them. Closer is the green valley with its farms and fields and little, winding lanes. Here, too, is the village, timeless and unchanging, and the manor house, her ancestral home, with its high, encircling wall and lawns and lake and tangled woodland. To the south is lonely Windy Point, thrusting out into a marshy corner of the harbour, with its sheds and bungalow and jetty, and to the north and east are the dark pinewoods, bounded by the Bradport by-pass and the ever-encroaching sprawl of Bradport itself. But directly below her, covering by far the largest part of the estate, is the heath, looking at this height like a lovely, hand-made blanket, coarse-woven in a myriad shades of green and purply-brown, with at its centre, the centre of everything, the sacred Stones.
For today Bella cares nothing for the village or the farms or the rusting industrial archaeology of Windy Point. It has not even occurred to her to calculate their worth, or what portion of them might now be hers. Let those who care for such things have them. Today she has taken possession of the only thing that matters. The Stones will be her inheritance and the wild heath her demesne, its rolling acres a last bulwark against the world.
Exultant she rises higher and ever higher to where the air is thin and the curvature of the earth can clearly be seen. Here, beneath a thin veil of alto cirrus, the whole of Dorset lies revealed, and, very plain at this height, those mysterious lines of earth energy like a silvery web, all converging on that now invisible figure, cross legged on her tiny hill, far, far below. "I am your new mistress," cries Bella in triumph. "I have seen your power and it is mine!"
And then it's as if she is enveloped in cold flame and all the ancient memories of her forebears, all the arcane lore, the accumulated wisdom of the ancients – which she knew must surely be there, lurking just beyond recall – is of a sudden vouchsafed to her. She has achieved enlightenment.
"So that's it!" cries Bella. "Of course! It's so obvious when you know."
She is just about to begin sifting through this wonderful gift of arcane data when a voice, at once close by and far away, says, "Och, it's Bella! Bella in her birthday suit!"
Bella jerks violently and stares about her in momentary confusion. "Oh, it's you."
"Ah'm awfie sorry, Bella," says McNab, backing away. "Ah didnae mean tae intrude."
"It's lucky you weren't here any sooner," grumbles Bella. "You'd have ruined everything. How did you know where to find me anyway? What do you want?"
McNab shakes his head. "Ah wisnae lookin for ye. Ah wantit tae acquaint masel wi the Tenstanes. They're Neolithic, ye ken."
"Yes, I did know that," says Bella acidly. But she cannot find it in her heart to be angry for long, not when she has just had such an amazing, life-changing experience. Indeed, she is already beginning to feel sorry for ordinary mortals; so blind, so ignorant, sleepwalking their way through their one, brief, pointless life. "What do you think of them now you've seen them?" she asks. "Aren't they wonderful?"
"Och ay, they're braw, Bella," says McNab, struggling to avert his eyes. "They're mair impressife than ah expectit. Ah mean, in the flesh, so tae say. Ah mean, ah didnae mean that. Whit ah mean is, the Stanes, they're mair substantial than ah michta . . . thocht."
Bella smiles kindly. "You don't have to be embarrassed, McNab. We adepts often go sky-clad, we think nothing of it." An adept! she thinks. Yes, that's what I am now: a wise woman, a seer, an adept in the dark arts.
Emboldened, McNab steps a little closer and observes her shyly. "Ye're aa hen's pecks," he declares. "An' blue."
Bella shivers. "I'm not surprised; it's bloody cold." Unfolding herself she stands and gratefully stretches her cramped limbs, causing McNab to take a sudden interest in one of the stones, peering closely at its scabrous surface.
"Did ye ken there's some writin here?"
"Graffiti I'm afraid; there's a lot of that. Some of it's old enough to be interesting."
"Seiven, aicht . . . But there's anely aicht! Anely aicht stanes."
"The other one's over there, behind those furze bushes. Half a tick while I get me drawers on and I'll show you. It's all terribly overgrown, I'm afraid; it needs a bit of maintenance."
"But that's still ainely nine." protests McNab.
"That's right, the tenth one's missing," says Bella, wobbling on one leg. "Ouch! A prickle. They say the Devil took it. Rubbish of course; it's probably propping up a barn somewhere. Pass me my jeans, will you?" Alerted by a slight sound she swings round. "Good God, where did you spring from? It's getting like Piccadilly Circus round here." For Bluebell has appeared behind them, flushed from running, her blue gingham dress and long blonde hair fluttering in the breeze.
Bluebell puts her head on one side and stares at them frowning. "Why are you undressed? Were you having sex?"
"Of course not," says Bella. "I've been meditating, that's all."
"Meditating? That's thinking, isn't it? I can do that quite well without taking my clothes off. Are these the Tenstones?"
"Yes. Do you like them?"
"They're not very big, are they? Not like Stonehenge. Have you seen it? I have." She runs round the circle, touching each Stone. "Look, I can reach the top of all of them. Where did they come from? Was it a long way off?"
"Not really. Just a few miles away, beyond those hills."
"Pooh, that's boring. The bluestones at Stonehenge come from the Prescelly Mountains in Wales. That's a hundred and thirty miles. They brought them on rafts and rollers and things. Why's this one lying down? Has it fallen over?" She jumps up and walks along it, holding her arms out for balance.
"That's the altar stone," says Bella, with a hint of a snarl. "It's where they used to sacrifice little girls that sneered at their temple. They were very particular about that."
"Okay, I get the message," shrugs Bluebell, jumping down. "Mum says to tell McNab that breakfast is getting cold."
"Ah dinna eat brakfast."
"Well it's ready anyway. Carol's hungry, even if you're not. You have to be there so Carol can have her breakfast."
Relieved to see them go, Bella watches them make their way down the hillside path that leads back to Windy Point. She'll have to find a way to discourage people from coming up here when she's meditating. She wonders a little anxiously if all that wonderful knowledge is really now hers. Did McNab's untimely interruption ruin everything? She decides to test it out. But where on earth to start, with five thousand years of memories to choose from?
How about all the various lovers she's had? That should be interesting. Then again, which one? There must have been hundreds over the millennia. Just imagine! Hundreds of lovers. Perhaps she should make it a real test and go for the very first. You always remember the first, like Jeremy Finch in his MG. She folds herself back down onto the altar stone and concentrates hard, trying to cast her mind back to the dawn of time.
To start with, there is nothing new, just the usual rabble, and Simon of course. But then, by what seems a perfectly normal act of recall, she is suddenly in a world both utterly alien and entirely familiar.
It is a bitter, howling winter's night and snow drifts in at the ever-open door; but the hut, a large one, is nevertheless warm and cosy, filled with people, animals and wood-smoke. Men are laughing, children playing. Bella is reclining luxuriously upon a bed of furs, a little apart from the others, quite naked but for an immense and rather itchy headdress, a quantity of gold jewellery and a full-body tattoo. The quality of recall is amazing, as real as something remembered from yesterday. She can even feel the pain of making the tattoo, and how proud she was of it. She can also feel something else.
Kneeling between her spread thighs, his body lit only by the flickering light of the fire, is a huge, hairy man holding an erect penis, also tattooed, the size of a moderate cucumber. As he lowers himself onto her, his long, greasy hair falling around her face, Bella inhales a heady mixture of male sweat and animal fat which instead of being repulsive immediately fills her with intense desire.
Wow! she thinks. One thing's for sure, she won't be going to the library any time soon. She is just about to give herself over to this ancient passion when a voice says, "It'll make you go blind, you know."
Bella jumps in surprise, then sighs longsufferingly. Is there to be no peace? She turns around but, oddly, there is no-one there. Perplexed she gets up and checks behind each of the stones. But no, there is no-one there either. How very strange. She definitely heard someone speak, but where on earth are they? It certainly wasn't McNab or Bluebell, who in any case can still be seen, two tiny figures in the distance. A radio? It didn't sound like a radio, and anyway, who would leave one here, switched on? A ghastly thought occurs. "Mummy?" she says. "Is that you?"
"Of course it's me," says the voice. "Who else have you got in here?"
Feeling suddenly rather wobbly, Bella sits down again. She would very much like to think she is imagining this, but she knows she isn't. There can be no doubt to whom those mocking tones belong. "Why haven't you spoken to me before?" she demands. "Why didn't you tell me you were properly alive?"
"Oh, you know," says Hester airily. "Busy settling in, enjoying having a nice young body again. I'd almost forgotten what it was like: all this energy, no aches and pains." She gives a teasing little laugh. "Thinking about sex all the time."
"I don't!"
"Practically all the time. Not that I'm complaining, far from it."
Bella is appalled. This is just what she feared most. She would infinitely rather be her neolithic forebear, making love in front of a hut-full of people, than suffer this terrifying invasion of her mental privacy.
"I knew it would be like this," she says crossly. "I don't want you listening to my thoughts. They're not for anyone else, they're mine. You're not to do it."
"I haven't been," says Hester indignantly. "I can't, even if I wanted to. I just felt the sensations, that's all. Same body, same sensations, obviously. There could hardly be any doubt what you were thinking about."
Bella colours. She is embarrassed, but relieved. "And you really can't read my mind?"
"No, of course not; we're completely separate: two minds in one body. I did tell you all about it once, when you were small. I suppose you've forgotten."
"But does that mean you can see what I see and hear what I hear?" persists Bella.
"And feel what you feel, yes."
Bella's heart sinks again. The thought of her mother constantly eavesdropping, even during her most intimate moments, is too awful to contemplate.
"You'll soon get used to it," says Hester cheerfully. "I did. After a while you'll forget I'm here. Whom were you thinking about anyway? That boring boyfriend of yours, I suppose."
"That's none of your business! Anyway, he's not boring. How can you say he's boring? You only met him once, for about half an hour."
"Is that all it was? It felt like days. All that tiresome computer stuff, and he drives an Allegro; give me a break, dahling!"
Bella fumes with annoyance. One thing is clear, death hasn't changed her mother at all; she's just as rude and infuriating as she ever was. "Well now you're here you'd better tell me what I'm supposed to do," she says sourly. "I might as well get on with it."
"Do?" says Hester.
"Yes, do — my duties, as Priestess. I've got all this stuff in my head, ceremonies and rituals and things, but it's all mixed up. I don't know how to start. How do I start?"
"Oh, that," says Hester disparagingly. "I wouldn't bother."
"Not bother!"
"Of course not. It's just a load of primitive, superstitious nonsense. Let's go out and have some fun. How about a nightclub? There's a new one just opened in Pinebourne."
"Fun!" cries Bella, scandalized. "I'm not here to have fun! I'm not here to go to flipping nightclubs! I was having fun before you . . . relocated, thank you very much. I had to leave Simon to come here, I had to give up my lovely job, and if I'm stuck with being Priestess then I'm damned well going to do the thing properly."
"But it's such a bore," protests Hester. "There's no-one left to care, so what's the point? Look, if you don't fancy dancing, how about a nice pub? I just want to get out somewhere, that's all; I just want to feel normal again. I know, lets go to the Ferryman. We could have a bar lunch. You must be hungry because I am."
"No! I don't want to go anywhere just now, thank you. I want to start being a Priestess."
"Oh come on dahling, don't be a misery all your life. I want to see if they're talking about me. I want to see if I'm mourned. I jolly well ought to be, seeing what I spent there over the years. Anyway, you never know, we might meet someone nice."
Bella finds herself becoming seriously upset. "I've got someone nice, Mother! He's kind and gentle and wonderful and I miss him terribly, and I don't care if he does drive an Allegro. Anyway, it's jolly reliable and not even rusty and he can't afford anything better a
t the moment and you needn't think you're going to start running my life for me just because you're inside my head because I won't have it. I've been thinking a lot about it and I just wouldn't be able to handle it. We're too different. We're chalk and cheese. I'd go mad. If you're going to carry on like this I shall jolly well go and jump off the end of the jetty and have done with it and that'll be the end of you too! I mean it!
There is a silence. When her mother speaks again, she sounds genuinely frightened and contrite. "All right, all right, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I said that about Simon. It's your life and obviously you can do what you like with it. Look, I know it's been a big change for you and everything and maybe I could have handled it better, but I haven't done this before either, you know. I've never been stuck inside someone else's head before. I've never been days and days without a drink, or a ciggy even. It's not much fun I can tell you. It's better than being dead, obviously, but it's not much fun. It's pretty awful, actually."
"Yes, I suppose it must be," admits Bella grudgingly. It could be that her mother just wants to get round her, like when she used to try and borrow money, but she does sound terribly lost and helpless and miserable now, as well she might. Perhaps her chirpy arrival was nothing more than bravado.
"I only wanted a bit of fun," says Hester reproachfully. "Is it so much to ask when you've just died? You don't die every day, after all."
"Yes, yes, all right," sighs Bella. "Look, I'll go out later in the week. I'll take Pat for a tomato juice or something."
"Tomorrow?"
"Yes, all right, tomorrow. But only if you tell me what I'm supposed to do. Rituals, please. Isn't there something for the inauguration of a new Priestess?"
There is a pause while Hester considers this. "Oh goodness, I don't know. I daresay there is, but I can't remember. Anyway, you can't hold an inauguration ceremony of one; you need the whole tribe, and there isn't a tribe. There hasn't been a tribe for thousands of years. That's why there's no point. We've outlived our congregation."
"But I've got to do something," protests Bella. "Or why am I here?"
Isabella: A sort of romance Page 11
