Lacybourne Manor (4 page)

Bertie didn’t even want to
remember what happened with the people at the animal shelter.

This carried on for years,
until Sibyl finally walked into their home in Boulder and asked
Bertie and Mags if she could move to Brightrose Cottage.

Brightrose Cottage was where
the Godwins would spend a goodly amount of their school holidays.
The cottage was located in a small clearing of a dense wood that
seemed somehow removed but was still very close to the small
seaside town of Clevedon in the beautiful English county of North
Somerset. Bertie had bought the house run down and derelict. Even
though surrounded by trees, the clearing allowed cheerful shafts of
sunlight to penetrate and warm the nearly ancient, ruin. Even in
disrepair, Bertie had fallen in love with the place and its
location and happily anticipated the work ahead of him in restoring
it.

While Scarlett and Mags
trundled off to Glastonbury, Bristol or other hippy hot spots,
Bertie, with Sibyl a constant at his side, got down to the business
of bringing Brightrose back to its original charm.

Under the creaking, warped
stairwell they’d uncovered the arched remains of a window that
dated back to the early 1400s and together they designed the
stained glass that would be refit. They’d painstakingly refinished
the wide-planked floors and Jacobean doors. They’d run the thick,
coarse ropes up the stairs to act as period-fitting banisters.
They’d fitted the heavy wrought iron sconces to the walls and
chandelier over the huge, gleaming, round dining room table. They’d
scrubbed years of dust, grime and soot off the stones of the
inglenook fireplaces in the living room and the dining room and the
vast hearth in the kitchen. In all the rooms they’d patched, primed
and painted the plaster. On occasion, they uncovered and exposed
secret alcoves, embedded beams and Somerset brick. They’d scoured
the local antique stores and dragged back heavy pieces of
furniture, carefully bringing them back to their former glory and
positioning them perfectly around the house. They’d refitted the
awkward kitchen to be a cook’s (or, Bertie’s, to be precise) dream
and built a lovely Summer House in the garden for Mags’s potions
and witch paraphernalia.

In the end, Brightrose
Cottage was lovingly, beautifully and meticulously restored and it
showed in every inch of the home. It was cosy, quaint, warm and
inviting. You didn’t live at Brightrose, you didn’t visit
Brightrose, you
experienced
Brightrose.

At Sibyl’s announcement that
she wanted to move to England, Bertie demanded, “What on earth are
you going to do there?”

Unfortunately, no matter how
much he loved her; there were limits to his patience when it came
to his daughter’s flightiness. She was thirty-one years old; she
had to find an anchor.

This, Bertie felt, should
come in the form of a man (although he would never
dream
of
uttering this notion in front of his feminist wife).

But Sibyl didn’t allow herself
to get close to men. Bertie found himself having the most unusual
wish that his elder daughter could treat his sex the way his
younger daughter did, taking them (quite terrifyingly frequently in
Bertie’s opinion) and then leaving them with nary a thought.

Sibyl seemed, as with
most anything, to find the most damaged men she could collect
(quite terrifying infrequently in Mags’s opinion). Then she bent
over backwards, turned herself inside and out and then twisted
herself in knots to sort out all their troubles. And then, even
though most of them would have probably laid down their lives for
her, she scooted them on their way so some other woman could sort
out their
new
problems of having lost the glory that was
Sibyl.

“I’ve no idea, Daddy,” she’d
answered his irate question, her voice small, so small he kicked
himself for his sharp tone. “But I feel I need to be there. It’s
the only place I’ve ever been truly happy and at peace.”

Now, how could a father argue
with that?

Especially when that peace had
been found mostly in his company and he knew exactly what she was
talking about when it came to Brightrose Cottage.

They’d then argued about how,
since there was no mortgage on the property, she could live there
without paying. They’d won her over by explaining that Scarlett’s
medical school would cost more than the house was even worth and
they’d signed the deeds over to her.

Mags and Bertie were thrilled
when Sibyl had found a part-time job in a local community centre
working with old people and children (how much trouble could old
people and children get her into?). She supplemented this with a
small but soon lucrative business selling handmade bath oils,
salts, lotions, shampoos, conditioners and divinely scented candles
to exclusive shops and boutiques around Somerset (oils, salts and
lotions didn’t live and breathe or have angry ex-husbands, which
they felt was a good thing).

It seemed Sibyl was more at
peace in England, but neither Bertie nor Mags could shake the
feeling that their daughter still seemed restless.

And they knew exactly why.

For, as the weeks, months and
years passed, it became more and more clear that Sibyl’s abiding
belief that her one true love would walk in and shine his light on
her life was not going to happen.

* * * * *

Throughout the telling of
the dream, Marguerite muttered, “Oh my,” and a couple of times, the
stronger, “Oh my goddess”.

Sibyl, as usual with her
mother, didn’t leave anything out, including an abbreviated version
of the very passionate activities that preceded her dream lover’s
grisly murder.

Nor the belief that this
lover was
her
lover, the man of her dreams, the man who would
change her life forever.

Which, of course, led to the
distressing fact that at the end he’d been killed.

“What do you think it means,
Mom?” Sibyl knew her mother read tarot cards, runes, tea leaves and
palms as well as dreams. She wasn’t really good at doing any of
this but she tried very hard.

“You say this man was vivid in
your dream?” Mags asked.

“I could draw you a picture,
that is, if I could draw,” Sibyl answered.

“Describe him,” Mags
demanded.

Sibyl did, in great detail,
leaving nothing out.

“Oh my,” Mags whispered.

“Will you stop saying, ‘oh my’
and tell me what you think this means?” Sibyl was at her wit’s
end.

Mags sighed hugely. “Honey, it
means you need a man.”

Sibyl rolled her eyes. Even
being a militant feminist, her mother often solved many serious
issues with the words “you need a man”. Mags was very into the
healing power of sex.

Then again, Sibyl’s mother had
been lucky enough to marry the love of her life, had a completely
faithful marriage and an active sex life that continued to this
very day (a fact that Sibyl unfortunately knew all too well).

In order to get her emotion in
check, Sibyl counted to ten. Bertie had taught her this tactic
years ago when it seemed clear that Sibyl would never learn to
control her fiery temper.

Sometimes it worked, sometimes
it, spectacularly, did not.

Then Sibyl said, “I need to get
some sleep, I’ve got to be at the Centre tomorrow.”

“Where’s the cat?” Mags
asked.

Sibyl had no idea why her
mother would want to know where Bran was. “He’s wandered back in
the room somewhere, why?”

“Because that damned dog of
yours would probably make any murderous scoundrel a cup of tea if
he had opposable thumbs. The cat would scratch his eyes out.”

Sibyl couldn’t help but laugh
because this was true.

“I love you, Mom.”

“
I love you too, baby.
Get some sleep, go out on the prowl this weekend and find yourself
a blessed man, for goddess’s sake. No woman should endure a year
long dry spell.”

“Thanks for the advice, Mom,”
Sibyl uttered the expression of gratitude but her tone said very
clearly she didn’t mean it.

Mags, as usual, ignored her
daughter’s tone. “I’m serious, Sibyl. Even if it is only sex, or
companionship, everyone needs it.” Sibyl remained silent at Mags’s
tender urging. Mags sighed and then said, “See you soon, my darling
girl. It’ll be April before you know it.”

Finally.

The thought of seeing her
parents in April
did
make Sibyl feel happy and relaxed.

“I hope so.” Again, Sibyl’s
tone said exactly how she felt.

After hanging up the
phone, Sibyl left the shutters open. She lay in bed thinking of the
dream, or more to the point, the man in the dream. He was immensely
handsome, dark and… well,
hot
. His touch set her on fire,
it was fevered and insistent and nearly worshipful. Until she was
ripped from the bed, his presence seemed the only thing in the
universe. There was nothing else but him, his hands, his mouth, his
body. He was her very essence (except a male), her other part, her
completion.

Mallory broke into her thoughts
by lumbering onto the high bed and settling in squeezing poor Bran
and Sibyl to the edge leaving them hanging on for dear life.
Somehow, even in this awkward but familiar position, she was
finally able to allow her mind to calm enough to go to sleep.

Even if she did do so with the
image of the handsome, hard-jawed, dark-haired man burned on the
backs of her eyelids.

Reunion

“
Oh for the love of the
goddess, get out of the car, will you?”

Sibyl was addressing her
dog
and
cat, who both, somehow, managed to fit themselves into her
old, red MG convertible.

Sibyl didn’t know how she’d
managed to get herself in this terrible snag nor did she know how
she managed consistently to find herself in a variety of terrible
snags, something which happened with disturbing frequency.

Her day had not gone well. It
was a busy day which included Bingo Afternoon at the Pensioners
Club of the Day Centre and try outs for the kids’ Annual Talent
Show in the Community Hall. Sibyl was responsible for running all
the myriad community programmes put on in the Centre and Hall. The
Day Centre and Community Hall comprised (along with a vast kitchen,
several small offices, some storage rooms, a stage and narrow
backstage area) an enormous, but dilapidated old building on a
Council Estate in a deprived area of Weston-super-Mare, a small,
seaside city in the West Country.

Early afternoon, after a
two-course lunch had been served to the pensioners and many of them
had gone home on the minibus the Council provided the estate, Sibyl
had pulled back the sliding doors and exited the smoky Day Centre.
She heard the Bingo call, “One, one, eleven, legs eleven,” sounding
behind her coming from Marianne, the Bingo caller’s, hoarse,
cigarette-clogged throat.

Sibyl entered the vast
Community Hall, sliding the doors shut behind her to see Jemma, her
dearest friend in England, sitting in an old, beat up plastic chair
and staring in horrified fascination at the stage. Sibyl glanced
toward the stage to see what held Jemma’s attention only to witness
four very young girls dressed in alarmingly alluring outfits far
older than their tender years, gyrating their hips and lip-syncing
to a popular song.

Sibyl dragged a chair over to
her friend and sat down to watch as the children carried out their
inappropriately suggestive performance.

The song ended and both Jemma
and Sibyl sat in stunned silence.

“Hey Miss Sibyl,” one of the
girls called.

“Hi Flower,” Sibyl called back,
her voice sounding strained.

“
How’m I going to handle
this?” Jemma muttered,
sotto
voce.
“This is a family show.”

Sibyl felt for her friend and
tried not to grin in amusement at her predicament. Jemma ran a
small youth project out of a side office of the Community Hall.
Sibyl volunteered for the project and co-ordinated its efforts in
the Community Centre. The girls were going to have to be told that
they should do something more age appropriate and considering the
fact that age ten was the new eighteen that was not going to be an
easy task.

In an effort to help her
friend, Sibyl called, “Girls, can you come down here for a
word?”

The girls clattered eagerly off
the stage. They did this because Jemma Rashid and Sibyl Godwin were
the shining lights of these young girls’ often unhappy, promiseless
lives.

Jemma, petite, dark-haired and
chocolate-eyed, was a local girl who was devoted to her community
and even more devoted to her family. This kind of devotion was not
experienced by many of the children on the Council Estate where
they lived and where the Community Centre was located. Many had
well-meaning but hard-working parents. Others had thoughtless or
even abusive, lazy, wastrel parents. Devotion to family and
community was a rare concept and one to be savoured whenever it
became available.

Sibyl, on the other hand, was
American, a fact in and of itself that made the girls think she was
the coolest of the cool. However they loved her accent – they loved
her style, her spirit and her incredible beauty more. She was nice
to them, always, and she had the best smile – a smile that could
warm you from the very top of your head straight down to the tips
of your toes.

The girls arrived to stand
before their two idols and they shifted on their feet, twisting
their ankles awkwardly, waiting for the opinion that meant
everything in their small worlds.