Once in a Lifetime (55 page)

Star’s house was set in the sort of landscape that tourists loved: wild, windswept, a jutting-out piece of land that seemed to hang over the sea. Ingrid knew she couldn’t have lived out here, along a tiny track of a road, with no visible neighbours and nothing but the roar of the sea and the sound of the wind racing through the trees for company.

Beautiful, yes, she’d give Star that. But a person might go mad out here.

Following Lena’s instructions on where Star Bluestone lived - Ingrid had had to pretend she wanted a special tapestry commissioned when she’d phoned Lena - Ingrid turned right after five miles, and followed an even more hopeless road, a track that appeared to lead to the sea. On the right, she saw a wooden sign swinging from a pole with Bluestone written in cursive script.

Ingrid swung her car in past the sign and bumped along a drive made entirely of sea pebbles. The house revealed itself when she reached a curve in the drive. It wasn’t the Begorrahstyle Oirish cottage Ingrid had been expecting but a graceful clapboard house that looked as if it had been built by a seafaring captain in the seventeenth century in between bouts of chasing pirates. Charming was the word to describe it, Ingrid decided, and this unknown Star went up in her estimation.

She parked and got out warily.

Anything could come to welcome her or scare her off: these crazy hippie types always had mad animals like ostriches, yaks, or maybe a pet goat with jewelled collar. But no menagerie came to greet her. Instead, a tall woman emerged from one side of the house carrying a vegetable trug and a trowel. Apart from her Wellington boots - ordinary green, no zany flowery ones - she was dressed perfectly normally: jeans and a grey fleecy sweatshirt.

Her long white hair was coiled up in a knot at the back of her head, and her skin was the creamy, nourished consistency of a model in a moisturiser ad.

If Ingrid hadn’t known better, she’d have put this woman in her late forties, but she knew that this was Star and that Star must be older than she was.

‘It’s lovely to meet you finally,’ said Star, as easily as if Ingrid had phoned first instead of turning up uninvited. ‘Come on in.’

Saying nothing, Ingrid followed her into the house.

Inside, it was all beautiful and evoked in Ingrid a type of envy. She’d have never been able to live in such elegant clutter.

There were pictures, books, ornaments, orchids being nursed back to health, single flower heads sitting in teacups, floaty muslin curtains that would be a nightmare for dust, and although it was all pristine, not a speck of fluff anywhere, it was so very easy to settle in here.

She could imagine David lying on the bigger of the couches, the one upholstered in a smudgy olive velvet, could picture him holding the model of a ship, admiring it as Star relayed its history, his head supported by an old barrel-shaped cushion.

This was beyond her ken, this exquisitely personal house with its wonderful artefacts, like a living museum. Ingrid had never had the gift for making a house beautiful. She’d paid people to do it for her. Her home was the work of two designers who’d argued together over flooring - ‘American oak is over. Walnut, wide boards, are where it’s at’ cupboards and precisely what sort of taps to put on the cloakroom basin: ‘If you go for anything other than Starck, I will die!’

This house was clearly all Star’s taste.

And beside the fire - a working fire, not a gas imitation one - were two wooden sculptures that were the exact replica of the figureheads beside the stairs in Kenny’s.

Ingrid gasped. ‘They’re ‘

‘Morrigan and Brighid,’ said Star, following her gaze.

‘I was going to say the statues David had made for the store.

I was surprised when I saw them,’ Ingrid went on, suddenly bitter that this woman had still had some link with David that Ingrid hadn’t known about. It kept getting worse and worse.

What other people had he known and talked to, people he’d kept from his wife? ‘Did you suggest he make them?’

‘Oh no,’ Star said, ‘I hadn’t met David in thirty-five years.’

Ingrid was astonished.

‘But your tapestries are in the store.’

‘More or less on the agreement that I didn’t have to meet him,’ Star said.

Ingrid finally allowed herself to sit down. Sitting, all the fire went out of her.

‘Why not?’

‘We’d parted too long ago for that. I don’t hold with the current belief that you can remain friends with people you’ve once loved. Been lovers with, yes. Goodness, I have many friends I’ve made love to. But actually loved, no. It doesn’t work. I didn’t need that in my life.’

‘Thank you,’ muttered Ingrid, relieved. She knew somehow that Star was being totally truthful. It was impossible to imagine Star lying about anything, actually. Honesty seemed to shine off her, the light of the truly good and kind.

‘Babe told me about you, and I came because I thought you’d had an affair with David,’ she said quietly.

‘You poor love,’ Star said with infinite kindness.

‘I want to find out who it was with, even though his friend said it was over, he’d ended it and was terrified I’d find out.

That was probably what killed him, not worrying over the store, for all that it’s in trouble …’ She knew she was babbling but Star didn’t look surprised. She seemed to be following this strange narrative perfectly.

‘Does it matter now who she is?’ Star asked.

Ingrid knew the pure rage had burned off her, but she still wanted to know.

‘Yes, I think so ‘

‘Well then, that’s what you have to do.’

Unusual, Ingrid thought. Most people - well, people like Marcella - would have a counter-attack to explain why it wasn’t a good idea, along the lines of But what good will it do you? Star let you think for yourself.

‘Just one more thing before I make us tea: did Babe tell you about my gift?’

Ingrid shook her head.

‘It’s magic in my hands, let me try on you.’

She sat beside Ingrid and took Ingrid’s cold, tense hands in hers.

Star closed her eyes and let herself connect to Ingrid’s heart and soul. Images rushed past her and, through years of practice, she made herself slow them down so she could concentrate on each frame. A younger Ingrid cradling a baby in her arms, staring at the tiny being with such intensity and love that they made a little cosmos all by themselves. Complete.

There was another child, and the cosmos was made of up three heartbeats: Ingrid and her two children.

There was no sign of David yet. Star wasn’t surprised. She’d seen this many times in women’s pasts, the women who were completed by their children, and the ones who weren’t, the ones whose heartbeats were always twinned with their man.

There was Ingrid holding David in a tangle of sheets, and Star was proud that she didn’t feel jealousy at this. She had made her peace with that past many years ago.

Sometimes she saw unusual objects in the images, and now she saw a crescent moon, druidic symbol of female strength.

Ingrid was strong, strong enough to stand at her husband’s graveside and know she had to keep going, strong enough to keep going no matter what she’d learned. A man was in the stream of pictures: short, grey-haired, with a clunky gold watch he kept waving around on his animated hands, and wearing a loud navy striped suit. He was important to Ingrid, although Star couldn’t see why. But he helped her. He held

Ingrid’s hands and she was crying with relief, but they weren’t lovers, it was a strange, tenuous link, but important.

‘Do you know a man who likes navy striped suits and has a big gold watch; short, not much hair?’ Star said, still holding Ingrid’s hands.

Ingrid’s face showed instant recognition.

‘That sounds like David’s old friend, Jim Fitzgibbon. He’s the one who told me it was over with this girl.’

A woman came into view, young, with long fair hair and the innocence of another age. The lover. She was in the picture and then flitted out, far away. It was odd, but the woman appeared beside the girl Lena had brought out here, Claudia … Star fitted the pieces of the puzzle together in an instant.

This was what she’d felt the day she took Claudia’s hands.

Someone close to her, her sister perhaps, who was connected to David. But it was only a weak connection, like a faint silk thread that dissolved briefly.

Then David himself appeared and Star could almost feel him sigh with relief.

David. She’d loved him so much and, since he’d died, she hadn’t felt any peace from his spirit. But she felt it now. Peace and calm. He was looking into her eyes, his spirit connecting with hers. In the vision, his hands were reaching to Ingrid’s.

That’s where he was happy, with Ingrid. The girl with the pale hair wasn’t the one he loved, she was like a willo’the wisp who appeared and then disappeared.

Star tried to let that knowledge flow back into Ingrid.

Sorry, my love.

On the seat, Ingrid felt the oddest sensation in her body, like a melting calm of acceptance.

Star let go.

‘How did you do that?’ said Ingrid, sitting back against the cushions, exhausted.

‘I let you access what’s in you, Ingrid,’ Star said. ‘It’s not hocus pocus, it’s what all people used to have. Our connection

with the spirituality of the earth, whatever you want that spirituality to be. It’s probably very strong in me today because of my connection with David, my old connection.’

‘I’m sorry I accused you of still seeing him,’ Ingrid said.

‘It’s all right, I loved him. I’ll always love him.’

Her words winded Ingrid.

‘I don’t say that to upset you, but it’s how I’ve felt for years.’

‘But -‘ Ingrid couldn’t get a handle on this. ‘Why didn’t you do something about it?’

‘David left me. He loved me too and still, he left me. You don’t choose who you love, otherwise we’d all be mad about Nelson Mandela and nobody else.’

They both laughed.

‘It’s strange, but I felt him saying sorry,’ Ingrid admitted.

Star thought about how to explain what she’d seen.

What would you say, Mama.’ she silently asked Eliza.

That was more of the magic of Bluestone Cottage: the magic of place. Both the druids and white witches understood the power of sites or ruins where great knowledge had lived, and in this cottage, where Bluestone women had used their wise, gentle magic to help the local people for three hundred years, there was huge, benevolent power.

Not the whole truth, Eliza Bluestone’s spirit let Star know. Enough to help her because she needs to go away from here with her strength recovered.

‘I saw someone else,’ Star said slowly. ‘A woman, a young woman, and she was in the distance in my mind. David was beside you, holding on to you, telling you he loved you and only you.’

Ingrid felt her eyes brimming with tears but none fell. She wiped them with her sleeve.

‘He’s sorry?’

Star nodded. ‘You felt it too. He loves you and he wanted to say sorry.’

‘This other woman -‘ Ingrid began. ‘My friend is supposed to be finding out who she is, because I want to know.’

‘Seeing the woman won’t bring you any more peace,’ Star stated. ‘I know that. It will only hurt. Your curiosity will hurt you far more. Leave it alone, he’s at peace and you can be too.’

Ingrid looked down at her hands, examining them. ‘I know you’re right,’ she said. ‘I felt it, felt everything you described.

How did you do that?’

‘I don’t like to pontificate but modern religions take away our power over ourselves. We are divine creatures and we have our own power. I can harness it, that’s all.’

Ingrid wanted to ask more but she had the feeling - a very strange feeling for a woman who made her living by asking the question ‘why’ - that she shouldn’t ask any more. This was about belief and now, after what had happened, she believed.

Through some strange miracle, she’d felt David say sorry.

She couldn’t tell anyone about this, nobody would believe it.

That Ingrid Fitzgerald, with her logical, precise mind, would let another woman hold her hands and help her feel, in a completely indescribable way, what had really happened in the past with David. And yet that was just what had happened.

The Ingrid of a year ago would have shrugged and disbelieved.

Now, Ingrid felt grateful to Star for sharing her gift with her.

‘Shall I make us tea?’ Star asked.

‘I’d love that,’ said Ingrid, getting to her feet. She began to walk around the room, touching some of the beautiful objects.

‘I want to know all about you and this place. There’s such a wonderful feel to this house.’

Star smiled. ‘There’s three hundred years’ worth of women’s hearts beating here,’ she said. ‘That’s the magic’

Ingrid walked through the store, breathing in the smells and seeing the sights that made it so magical. It was Halloween and, in honour of the day, orange and black decorations covered the store, with bats and witches whirling up above, and pumpkins sitting on many counters. Star would laugh when she saw it all, Ingrid knew.

Halloween was really Oiche Samhain, according to Star, a pre-Christian harvest festival where the veil between the worlds lifted and spirits could roam as they pleased. Star often talked to her about the pre-Christian traditions and Ingrid found it fascinating. She’d told Star she ought to write a book about what she knew.

‘What I know has to be passed down person to person,’

Star said, and Ingrid had grown quiet.

She felt sad that Star had no beloved daughter to follow her, although Natalie Flynn went to see her a lot, and seemed to be like a daughter to her. But perhaps the magic only came from a true genetic link.

Star had known Natalie’s mother and she’d kept a lot of her things: books, clothes, jewellery. Natalie seemed to love going there and listening to stories about her mother. Molly had visited Star, too, with Natalie.