Moon Song (8 page)

The car door opened and Mark watched the slight, fey figure climb out and fling a transparent, silk rain-cape over her head. It flew out like wings to either side as she fled across the wet gravel to the front porch. Instinctively, he put out his arms in greeting, she ran into them. In the joint hug the rain-cape fell off, Mark retreated with her into the big hall.

‘Stay there.’ He let go of her. ‘I’ll grab your bags. Is the boot unlocked?’

‘Here.’ She pushed the key into his hand.

Standing, watching, as he pulled bags out of the boot with the rain streaming off him, she wondered what was going to happen. The hug had been electric, knocking her off balance, him too she felt. She applauded as he locked the car and raced back to the door, dropping the suitcase onto the flags, putting her laptop carefully on the table then shaking himself like an otter. His black hair was plastered down on his skull, rain dripped off his nose. They both burst out laughing.

‘Proper Cornish weather to greet you.’ His voice was warm as he pushed the wet hair off his face and searched for a handkerchief. ‘But it’ll perk up tomorrow. Should be a good, bright day.’

‘I don’t mind.’ She was grinning ridiculously as she looked him over.

‘I know.’ He grinned back, ‘I look like a wet dog.’

‘Or an otter,’ she said softly.

‘Nice one! C’mon, let’s get you up to your room, you can shower, change, rest, while I clean up. Dinner won’t be long. Shout when you’re ready and I’ll show you where the library is and all that. The house is very higgledy-piggledy, easy to get lost in.’

She followed him up the stairs and round the gallery to a large bedroom. A fire was going nicely in the grate, the wood
scenting up the room. ‘Oh!’ She stopped in the doorway, staring. ‘I’ve never had a fire in my bedroom before, never even been in a room like this, it’s gorgeous.’

Mark found himself blushing, his efforts to make it nice rewarded. He put her bag on the oak chest at the end of the bed along with her laptop. ‘The bathroom’s through here.’ He opened a door.

She followed him. The bathroom was cosy and warm with a window that looked out into the evening, big fluffy towels called invitingly to her. She came back into the bedroom. ‘I think I do need to clean up. The drive was longer than I expected what with all the lorries and the rain. And you certainly do!’ She was laughing.

‘Too right! I’ll see you in half an hour or so.’ He backed out of the door.

Isoldé found herself blushing. It was a strange, slightly out of control feeling. He felt it too, she could see that, like in a car when you were learning to drive, being too heavy on both accelerator and brake. Slowly she walked round the room, touching the furniture, feeling her way into the place. For a moment, she sat down on the faded sofa, it was comfortable, not over-stuffed, wide enough to relax into and look out of one of the windows. Mark had put on the bedside lights so the room was softly lit, she could see out of the window rather than just mirror blackness. Raindrops snaked down the pane making twisty patterns, sometimes splitting and spreading. Eyes half shut, Isoldé found she was watching faces grow and dissolve in the raindrop shapes. A wizened face grew out of one big drop spreading sideways, the eyes sharp, shining, looking straight at her. Her own eyes opened wide. The face was really there, looking at her, she saw the mouth move and words formed in her head.

‘Welcome!’ The mouth smiled along with the eyes. ‘Waited long for you, we has.’

The rain fell faster obliterating the face. Isoldé stared as it
disappeared, the drops becoming just rain. A log popped in the fire jerking her awake. The room was warm, comfortable, she noticed the flowers, the curtains, the pictures. Slowly she brought herself fully conscious again. Time for a shower, she thought, pushing back the memory of the face.

Determinedly, she unpacked her bag, hanging things in the old tallboy and putting underwear on the shelves. She took her wash bag into the bathroom and turned the shower on. It was one of the enormous types you get in big hotels, nearly a foot across, pouring hot water down onto you in a flood. He’d left shower gel in there and a flannel as well. Everything provided. She stripped off and climbed under the flowing waters, allowing them to rinse away the travel tiredness as well as the visions. She turned her face up into the water stream and allowed it to pour over her, then turned her head down so it beat onto the back of her neck. Slowly, the water did its job. She felt the muscles loosen, the tension relax, the face and the hare and the visions got out of her head so she could feel herself again rather than this weird invasion by spirits not her own.

She turned off the water and stepped out of the shower, pulling a warm towel around her. ‘Please, leave me alone!’ she whispered looking back towards the bedroom. ‘No more faces. I need my space. If you want to talk to me, tell me things, stand back now and give me some room. I’m not used to this and I don’t know what’s going on. Leave me alone tonight.’

It was odd but she could actually sense a withdrawing, as though some presence which had filled the room was shrinking back, becoming smaller, less obtrusive. There was also a sense of apology in the air. ‘Thank you,’ she said to nothing visible. There was an answering feeling, like a smile.

Later, dry, scented, hair shining, she pulled on a loose silk shirt and linen trousers, threw a long cardigan over her shoulders and went downstairs.

At the bottom Isoldé found herself again in the wide hall, big enough for a large room in its own right. She stood still, looking, then turned around on her heel. There were several doors leading off, which one was he behind? ‘Mark! ’ she called. ‘I’m here.’

A door at the back opened and he appeared, dry and clean in jeans and a jumper, a cooking apron tied round his waist. ‘Better?’ he asked.

‘Mmm,’ she nodded. ‘It’s wonderful what a shower will do for you.’ She was not going to tell him about the faces, not now anyway.

‘C’mon through, we mostly eat in the kitchen.’

She followed him into a huge flag-stoned room, bright rugs on the floor. Steel and copper pans hung from racks on the walls around a Rayburn, a big beech table glowed in the soft light and good smells came from the pots on the stove.

‘Suddenly, I know I’m hungry,’ she told him.

‘Wine?’ He held a bottle over a glass. ‘It’s Margeaux, is that OK?’

‘Oh! Yes, thank you.’ She took the glass and sat down on the other side of the table from the stove, guessing he would want to be up and down serving. There was bread and oil on the table along with a paté and olives.

‘Tuck in.’

She watched him watching her. He brought the casserole to the table and slid into the carver chair opposite her. For a few moments there was only the sound of satisfied munching as they dug into the olives. Mark was amused to see her dip her bread in the wine as well as the olive oil.

‘French habit?’ he asked her.

‘Uhuh.’ Isoldé’s mouth was full, she nodded.

‘It’s good you’re here in Caergollo.’ Mark coughed, his voice had gone throaty. He concentrated on serving the casserole, then poured more wine. ‘Sitting across the table from you …’

‘It feels slightly incredible to me,’ she replied, her own voice
was a bit choked too. Stay on target she told herself, don’t get into the real reason you came. ‘It’s somewhere I’ve always dreamed of, ever since I got into folk music, heard Tristan. There was always something about him, about his music. Still is.’

‘He was, is, special,’ Mark agreed, feeling a bit squashed that her first thoughts seemed to be for Tristan and not for himself. Maybe she felt as overwhelmed as he did. There was so much chemistry just being in the same room with her.

‘You knew him all your life, didn’t you?’ Isoldé tried to get the conversation level again.

‘Since I was ten, went for the choir as I told you in the interview.’ Mark decided that, actually, Tristan was a safe topic of conversation for the time being. Anything else, he felt, was going to get him into deeper waters than he could handle as yet.

‘Can you tell me about it?’

Mark paused, ate some more, thinking.

‘My dad died in a fishing accident when I was twelve,’ he began. ‘It started as a fine evening, putting the lobster pots out with his mate, then a sudden squall sprang up, big waves hitting the side of the boat. They had to let go the pots and were trying to bring her round into the wind when a rope caught him and swept him off the deck. Jem tried to save him, threw the lifebelt and tried to get the boat to him but he was swept away. The last Jem saw of him he was trying to stay afloat but heading out to sea. They never found his body.’

Isoldé waited a moment, wanting to touch his hand but not daring to. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.

‘That was a long time ago.’ Mark looked up at her. ‘Mum went to pieces. A few months later she died of a heart attack. I always thought she died of a broken heart. So Tristan adopted me. I’d been staying here most weekends and in the holidays since he’d got me into Exeter Choir School the year before. I pretty well lived here already. Tristan was the elder brother I’d never had. He was my family.’

Isoldé sat quiet, watching Mark. He’d lost his family twice.

‘I sort of hadn’t realised that it was Tristan who played the organ here,’ Isoldé began, ‘that he was the choir master. I never think of him doing things like that, only singing and playing the harp.’ Isoldé stopped, brought the subject round again to possibly less personal things. ‘Was he much older than you?’

‘About fifteen years. He was twenty-seven when Dad died, just getting into his own career. That was after he did the Belfast gig that really set him on the road, got him his first recording contract.’

Isoldé sat thinking, Mark watched her.

‘He never had children.’

‘No. He got the HIV on the second North African trip. After that, I suppose he wouldn’t even consider the idea. He’d never been a great one for women as far as I knew so it didn’t seem much of a loss to him.’ Mark paused, looking into the middle distance. ‘It’s odd that, I was only thinking about it just before you came. He wasn’t an ostentatiously celibate person, nor gay, just didn’t seem to be interested. He always said his music was all his passion.’

Isoldé had finished her food. Mark changed the subject back to dinner.

‘There’s fruit and cheese. Coffee, tea, herb teas. We could have it in the library?’

‘Yes, please.’

She followed him out across the hall into a room on the other side of the house and stopped short in the doorway, knowing she had been here before. It was just as she’d seen it in her dreams; a large room with a warm feel, the dark red walls and velvet drapes setting off the books and picking up colours in the Persian carpet. The grand piano stood off to one side near the windows, an assortment of comfortable looking chairs and a sofa were scattered about and there was the huge ingle-nook fireplace with a good log fire burning.

‘It’s …it’s beautiful.’ Isoldé sent her eyes looking round the room, admiring.

‘I’ll get the pudding,’ he offered and went off to the kitchen again.

Left alone, she went to the windows, three and a French door. She tried the handle, it opened, the scent of wet grass filled her nostrils, the stream chuckled to itself across the other side of the lawn. She shut the door, turned to the piano, it was a Bechstein. She stroked the ivory keys.

‘Do you play?’

Mark’s voice made her jump.

‘No.’ She managed a laugh. ‘I can’t read music. My uncle taught me the harp by ear, same as he played. I can pick up a tune very quickly but I can’t write it down. We never had room for a piano in the Belfast house.’

‘Umm! I suppose not,’ Mark said. ‘Feel free to tinkle away though.’

‘Not in front of you!’ Isoldé was blushing.

‘Hey …’ Mark began then found nothing else to follow it.

Isoldé left the piano and came over to curl on the hearthrug beside the black cat. The cat yawned, stretched and laid his head on Isoldé’s knee for a stroke. She rubbed his ears.

‘That’s Embar,’ Mark told her, ‘Tristan’s cat. He stayed with me.’

Mark had brought cheeses, biscuits and fruit as well as rosemary tea. She was glad of the herbs, couldn’t have coped with coffee. They talked about music, about the singing masterclass with Tristan that Isoldé had gone to some years back.

‘I didn’t know you played the harp,’ he said.

‘Only for folk music and only for fun, I’m not a professional.’

‘Did you bring it with you?’

‘No. I came to see Caergollo. And you. And it’s only for the weekend anyway.’

‘Would you bring it next time?’ Mark realised what he’d said,
held his breath waiting for her answer.

‘Yes.’ She turned to him, a smile lighting her eyes.

Saturday

Sunlight peeking through the window to stroke her face woke Isoldé. She stretched, luxurious and alone, rolled out of the big bed and went to the window. A buzzard called. Looking out over the garden, she watched him circle high up then slide down the air currents to land in one of the trees on the other side of the stream. Mark had left binoculars on the window seat; she took them and, holding her breath, watched the bird feed the chick. For a moment she stood at the window, looking out, seeing nothing, thinking about last night. They had hardly touched, just occasional fingers brushing. ‘Not yet,’ something had whispered to her, ‘wait.’ He seemed to feel the same. She put the binoculars down and went to shower.

Out on the cliff path the light on the grass was bright and fine, glittering with dew. She rounded a bend in the cliff trail and stopped short. A hare sat in the path. ‘Hello,’ she breathed, standing quite still lest she startle the creature away.

The hare came closer. Whiskers twitching, it stretched towards her until she felt the wetness of its nose as the creature touched her bare ankle below the rolled up jeans, then it sat back. Isoldé slowly crouched down and stretched her hand towards it. Again the nose came forward, this time the lips wrinkled back and she felt the teeth rub against her skin. She hardly dared breathe.

Having scented her, the hare dropped to all fours again and moved away a pace then it turned its head and met Isoldé’s eyes. She felt something stab through her, almost like a recognition. The creature turned away and loped slowly up the path.