Moon Song (2 page)

Isoldé jerked out of the dream, half sat up and then fell back to sleep again. This time she found herself in the doorway of a beautiful old room lit by a wall full of French windows; they showed lawn and trees sloping away with a stream chuckling alongside. The walls were covered in books; there was a desk and a grand piano near the windows. In a big wing chair by the fire Tristan sat nodding, his fingers stroking the long black fur of the cat in his lap.

She let go the door handle and came over to him. She felt the attraction of him as she always had, but this was up a couple of orders of magnitude on anything she’d felt before at concerts or even at the master class she’d gone to. She felt his loneliness and, at the same time, his reaction to her. She stood beside him looking down into eyes that looked so hungrily up into her own.
Electricity sang through her blood, she reached out a hand to stroke his cheek and leaned into him to press her mouth on his. The effect was startling. Her hand felt nothing and she found herself kissing air.

She lurched back. ‘You’re dead …’ she whispered.

Tristan hadn’t moved, he still lay back in the wing chair, watching her hungrily. Then tears started in his eyes. ‘Why …oh why …why now? Why have you come now when I can no longer touch you?’

She felt his pain but there was nothing she could do except ache with him, she could not reach him across the worlds.

He turned his face away from her into a cushion, dry sobs hacking his throat, he was in the deepest pit of misery. The black cat reached up a soft paw to touch his ear offering comfort. ‘Cat!’ he whispered as he stroked the black fur. ‘Oh cat. Why?’

Her body jerked again as the dream took another turn. Now she was somehow looking into the cat’s golden eyes and feeling herself sucked down into them; it was like going down into a pool of darkness. She came out of the darkness to find herself in a strange grove of trees, there was an ancient stone standing at its centre that looked like a giant’s head poking up through the earth. Suddenly Tristan was there. He took her in his arms, she could feel him now.

‘Help me!’ he whispered as their climax came.

‘I will,’ she told him, not knowing what it was she was promising.

The vision changed again suddenly, pulling her away from the ecstasy. It was as though she was rushing backwards down a telescope. She flew over a white pebbled beach, then over the sea on the moonpath, rushing backwards to find herself standing on a windswept cliff.

Her vision changed again. Now she was peering through a weird rock formation and seeing Tristan once more; he was alone
in the strange grove without even the black cat for company.

‘Help me!’ he called across the worlds, reaching out both hands towards her. ‘I need you. I cannot write her song without you!’

‘Me …?’ she stuttered. ‘What song? Where are you?’

‘The moon’s song …’ his voice was barely audible now.

Isoldé struggled to stay with him but the world was going to grey mush around her. The last thing she remembered was Tristan’s voice.

‘I want you!’ he whispered. ‘I want you so much …’

At last Isoldé half woke up, wondering where on earth she was …if indeed she was on earth at all. It felt as if she’d travelled the universe in her dreams. Tristan was still with her, she could sense him as though he was there in the bed beside her. She closed her eyes again.

This time it was different. The room was high ceilinged, coved and painted with flowers and leaves. The bed was much larger than hers, one of those old French beds that looked like a sleigh.

Shivers ran up and down her flesh, like fingers stroking her. Her body burned, on fire for the touch. If she opened her eyes it went away so she kept them closed. She could feel hands now, stroking the inside of her thigh, pinching the skin of her nipples into erectness, she mewed softly. The hands took her waist and pressed her back. She could feel the body now, the legs sliding between hers, and then the mouth, bitter-sweet, kissing her deeply. It left a metallic taste in her mouth and the scent of mothballs. Her body moved in rhythm with the one above her, fire rose in her belly and streamed down her legs and through the soles of her feet. Her mind exploded at the same moment as she felt the fiery stream shoot up inside her. She opened her eyes.

Nothing. Her hands groped wildly, feeling nothing, no-one. She was alone. She cried out, reached out, where had he gone? It couldn’t end, not yet, not like that. She was back in her body, no
longer in the dream. The sheets were wet, she dripped with perspiration, cold and slimy, shivering. Groggily, she sat up, her head pounding. She tried to get up and fell, sliding down the side of the bed onto the floor with a thump. Her legs wouldn’t carry her. She crawled over to the chair and found the bath towel, pulled it round her, lay against the cold radiator, shivering.

There was light, the streetlamps shining through the curtains. She began to see things in the room, recognise them. For a while there, she had thought she was still in that other bedroom with the high coved and painted ceiling, in the big sleigh bed.

Isoldé shook herself. She was freezing cold, sat on the floor after the most incredible orgasm of her life with a man she couldn’t see and she was going through an inventory of furniture like an antique dealer. She began to laugh. It got hysterical. She struggled over to the door and climbed up the door frame to reach the light. Seeing her own room, her own things, was strange. She had seen the other room so clearly, had felt so at home there. This one looked small and drab. It needed cleaning, there were cobwebs and the mirror was clouded with dust. She struggled to the shower. The dustcarts rolled into Montague Street and began their morning clamour.

‘What …?’ she muttered through chattering teeth. ‘What have I done? What have I promised?’

Mark drove slowly down the track to Caergollo, pulled the handbrake on and switched off the engine. He didn’t want to get out of the car. He didn’t want to be here at all. He’d told the solicitors, everyone, to go away, leave him alone, let him go to the house on his own and now, here he was. With the car door open he could hear the stream singing and, further off, the faint sound of waves crashing against the cliffs. There was an empty feeling in the middle of him, like a stone, or rather like the place where a stone should be but wasn’t. He kept expecting the door to open and Tristan’s crotchety face to peer round the jamb and shout to him to come on in, get a bloody move on, they hadn’t got all day. But it didn’t.

Mark climbed out of the car and stood looking at the door. He felt in his pocket for the big, old key. It jangled against the iron ring as he pulled it out. The lock turned easily, well oiled. Mark pushed the door open and stood staring into the dim hallway. He was blinking like an owl after the bright sun outside when something soft touched his legs, wrapped itself around them and meowed. Mark bent to pick the cat up in his arms, burying his face in the black fur. At last, the tears came.

In the library, Embar on his lap and a tumbler full of Talisker in his hand, he sat staring. He could hear the voice inside his head.

The voice faded. The words were the same as in the letter. It had arrived in Kyoto just after he got back from seeing the Ox Herding paintings. He touched his pocket; he carried his set of cards of the ten paintings always now. And the letter. He pulled it out.

Mark couldn’t see to read any more, his eyes were full of tears.

Embar nuzzled his hand. Again he buried his face in the black fur, crying.

Back at the flat, Isoldé pushed open her front door then turned back to triple lock it again once she was inside. This was a safe building. There were twenty-four-hour guards in the lobby and a computer-coded entrance system on the street door, plus entry phones to each flat. Isoldé still rattled the locks to make sure. It was thieving louts using terrorism as an excuse she feared, not terrorists.

She made more coffee, took it over to the computer. She lived on coffee. ‘At least I still don’t smoke,’ she thought, ‘but, at this rate, it won’t be long. I have to go. I have to leave this place.’

Amongst the usual crud and work stuff in her email was a blast from the past. She hadn’t spoken to Darshan for ages. He used to run Forbidden Planet, the sci-fi bookshop on New Oxford Street and they had met when she’d been looking for some out of print Roger Zelazny, he found the books for her, found they shared tastes, they had become friends. He’d been her holiday and weekend-job boss while she was at university; she’d had to work to make ends meet. Later he became her lover. He introduced her to classical music at the Wigmore Hall and the South Bank, jazz at the Hundred Club and, occasionally, Ronnie Scott’s. She introduced him to The Troubadour, mediaeval music, folk and, of course, Tristan Talorc. He had left the Planet, and London, at the end of the nineties, after their affair was over. They had lost touch. Now, here he was again. And offering her a job.

‘Look us up on the net,’
the email gave the URL.
‘We’ve got quite a reputation now, sci-fi shop of the west *g*, but I want to expand. Music
,
classical, folk, mediaeval, rare. That’s where you come in. And there’s more …’
Darshan left the lures hanging, as always.

Isoldé remembered dragging him to The Troubadour coffee house in Earls Court to hear Tristan Talorc at the height of his
fame. In return, he took her to original instrument and rare organ recitals. He’d even taken her to Lunenburg Heath, near Hanover, to hear some young bloke playing the Bach organ there. Isoldé remembered how impressed she was with the performance, and how totally under-whelmed she’d been by the B&B Darshan had found them.

She leaned back in her chair. Of all the coincidences …She pulled a road map off the shelf, where was Exeter? She found it, traced the route, it looked easy, M4, M5. There was a town plan at the back; Darshan’s shop was in Cathedral Close. Sounded posh, just the sort of thing he would love. She called the paper, the editor grudgingly let her have a long weekend. She began to pack.

It was mid-afternoon when Isoldé stopped outside the shop.
Close Encounters
it said in gold letters on a deep blue ground over the door. The words were repeated in gold on each of the big windows, a half-circle of words over a bulge of golden sun setting, or rising, on a dark horizon. Isoldé chuckled at the sign, it was typical of Darshan, straight out of film-land. She got out of the car and stuck her head round the shop door, he saw her at once.

‘Hi.’ She smiled across to him. ‘Can I park here?’

‘Hey, Zoldé!’ He came over, arms outstretched, hugged her. ‘No, the wardens’ll do you straight away. Go up to the top.’ He pointed to a wider bit of road in front of a café in the direction she was pointing. ‘Turn round and come down the bottom, past
the turning you came in by.’ Darshan waved towards the west side of the Close. ‘I’ll go down and clear the space I bagged for you.’ He grinned and jogged off down the road.

Isoldé watched him lope away, admiring. Darshan was gorgeous, she’d forgotten just how much. With a sigh, she turned the car and drove carefully down behind him. There was a row of private parking spaces at the bottom and he was pulling a booktrolley out of one. It was decorated with a huge cardboard billboard painted with,
‘Really sorry folks, it’s for my best girl !!!’

‘Oh ye gods, Darshan! How d’you get away with that?’ Isoldé pointed at the edifice.

‘I sweet-talk the wardens.’ He had on his butter-wouldn’t-melt look.

‘I’ll bet you do!’ Isoldé told him.

He took her back to the shop, introduced her to the staff, showed her round.

Later, when the shop closed and everyone was gone home, Darshan made coffee and put his feet up on the desk. ‘What d’you think?’

Isoldé carried on walking round the shelves, looking at the books, then she turned to the collection of CDs and slowly rifled through. It was a small but good quality, eclectic mix of classical, mediaeval, jazz and folk.

‘What’s your turnover?’

‘Pretty good. We’re in our third year now. Do you want the detailed figures?’

‘Later, yes, if you really want me to chuck everything up in London and come in with you. I want to know what my risk is.’