Resurrectionists (22 page)

He kept reading, watching his congregation. From time to time, one or two of them would look up and glance back at her. She was well-known throughout the village now. Most villagers had heard of her, knew who she was, and were a little afraid of her. He had told a number of people not to be afraid, that she was leaving soon, that they had no reason to believe she was anything like Sybill. But today, he didn’t believe that. Today he knew for certain that whatever power Sybill had possessed, this girl possessed it also. The service drew to a close, his parishioners stood, adjusted clothing, pulled on hats and scarves as he made his way to the front door. He cast the door open, the church organist played
O Come All Ye Faithful
, and they began to file out past him, shaking his hand, wishing him Merry Christmas, some of them quizzing him with their expressions, did he know why she was here? He answered them with a blank smile, a slight lift of his shoulders.

Every moment he expected her to walk past. But it wasn’t until he had farewelled the last parishioner, Elsa Smith, who gave him a stern glance, that he could check inside to see where she was. She still sat with her head bowed, the only other person in the church. He stood at the end of her pew, wordlessly. Of course she looked up. She could sense him.

“I’m sorry, Reverend,” she said, standing, pulling on her scarf and gloves. “I wanted to wait until everyone had left. I was hoping they wouldn’t notice me.”

“Why are you here?” he asked, in a much quieter voice than he’d intended to use.

“It’s Christmas. I always go to church Christmas morning.”

“But not on Sundays?”

“Never on Sundays. Christmas and Easter only. I . . . you know . . . I
believe
.”

“Believe?”

“God. Jesus. Or at least, I want very much to believe, which is kind of the same thing.”

She seemed so genuine, almost naive. Perhaps she was telling the truth, perhaps she wasn’t here just to crow about how much she knew. As Sybill had done. He allowed himself to relax. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Merry Christmas,” she said, with a deferential nod of the head. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset anybody by coming here.”

She slid past him, was nearly out the door when he remembered himself. “God bless you,” he said. She didn’t answer. He watched her move up the path and out onto the street, then closed the door behind her, feeling peculiarly affected by her candidness, her apologetic manner, her loneliness, for she was clearly lonely. He found himself hoping fervently that she would soon return to her family, to her warm home country. And not only because it would be better for Solgreve, but because it would be better for her. And much, much safer.

Yesterday she had been so confident. She had been talking to Adrian, home with his family in

Toowoomba, and she had said, “Of course my mother will call me. It’s Christmas Day.” And she had waited and waited, and by bedtime that night, she realised that she and Janet had silently agreed, on opposite sides of the planet, to play a stupid game with each other. Who will give in first and phone on Christmas Day?

They both won. Her mother hadn’t phoned her and, pissed with her, Maisie hadn’t phoned home either.

So now it was Boxing Day and the game was

officially over, Maisie called Janet.

Her father answered.

“Dad! It’s me.”

“Maisie! Merry Christmas, sweetheart. We thought you might call yesterday.”

“Likewise.”

“Your mother’s just here,” he said, letting her know that he wasn’t going to enter into a discussion about who should have called whom while Janet was standing by.

“I’ll talk to her in a second. Tell me about you. How was Sydney? Adrian was so excited about working with you.”

And so they chatted for a few minutes, and Maisie was struck for the first time how much her father sounded like Adrian. Not his voice, but his pauses and his deliberate consonants, and even the little blackouts where he answered a question different from the one she had asked just because his mind was elsewhere, roaming around among semibreves and quavers, and he’d misheard her.

“We miss you, sweetheart,” he said before he handed her to Janet. “When will you be home?”

“In a few weeks I guess. I’m a bit lonely. But Adrian will be away until the end of January so there’s not much point in coming back before then.”

“Well, I’ll look forward to seeing you again. We’ll have a family dinner, the four of us. My treat.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Of course he suggested a family outing. She could count on her fingers the number of times she’d been alone with her father. It was as though he was afraid of her. “You’d better put Mum on.”

The phone changed hands, then her mother’s voice came over the line. “Hello?”

“Hi, Mum.”

“Hello, Maisie.”

A short silence. Then her mother said. “How’s your hand?”

Maisie was momentarily dumbstruck . . . her hand?

Then she remembered her alleged injury and felt the terrified relief of someone who had nearly stepped in front of a train. “It’s not too bad. The cold makes it ache a bit, but I’m not really using it to do anything.”

“Well, keep it warm. You don’t want to make it worse.”

“Merry Christmas,” she said.

“You too. What did you do Christmas Day?”

“Nothing. I went to church then I came home and read a book. And ate a lot of chocolate.” And drank an entire bottle of wine by herself, but Janet didn’t need to know that. “It was a bit lonely.”

“It’s your choice to be there.”

“I know.” She leaned back in her armchair. The springs squeaked. “What are you and Dad doing for New Year’s?”

“We’ve got dinner reservations at Sirocco. We should be able to see the fireworks from there. And you?”

“Nothing firm planned yet, but if my friend Cathy gets back from Edinburgh in time I’ll probably spend it with her.”

“Well, don’t drink too much.”

“I never do.”

Another short silence. Unbelievable how her mother could hold a grudge this far across the universe. She could hear Luciano, their canary, chirruping in the background, and a wave of homesickness washed over her. “I should go, Mum. This is costing me a fortune.”

“All right, then. Have a nice New Year, and phone again some time.”

“I will. I love you, Mum.”

“Yes. I know.”

“And?”

“And I love you too. You know that.”

Maisie smiled. “Bye.”

Then her mother was gone and she was alone

again. She replaced the receiver, unfolded herself from the armchair and headed for the kitchen to make tea. By far the best thing about spending Christmas alone was the absence of Boxing Day deflation. There was no way today was ever going to be worse than yesterday. Halfway to the kitchen she heard the phone ring. She returned to pick it up.

“Hello?”

“Maisie, it’s Sacha.”

Back on the roller-coaster. “Hi, Sacha. How was Christmas?”

“What are you doing New Year’s Eve?” he said, as though he hadn’t heard her.

Nothing, say you’re doing nothing.

What about Cathy? Cathy hurrying home from

Edinburgh to comfort her teary friend?

“Nothing,” she said evenly, suddenly becoming aware of the pulse beating in her throat.

“I’m going down to London. Would you like to come?”

“Sure. Of course. That would be –”

“Great. I’ll pick you up Thursday morning.”

“How long will we be staying?”

“Just a few days, maybe a week. Don’t pack too much. And I’ve got a place we can stay for free.”

“Great. Where?”

“It’s really central, you’ll like it. I have to go, I’m late for work.”

“Oh. Okay, then I’ll see you –”

“Thursday. Around eleven. Bye, Maisie.”

“Bye.”

She glanced at the photograph next to the phone, her thumbnail caught between her teeth: Sybill and Sacha. She had gazed at it so many times, especially now she had this interest (
go on admit it, it’s an obsession
) in Sacha. “Damn it!” she said, flipping the photo face down.

Nothing was going to happen. She was merely enjoying the company of a pleasant man on New Year’s Eve. There was no reason to bring the turmoil inside her head out into the real world. Sacha didn’t know how intimately they were acquainted in her imagination. This was just a friendly social outing. Nothing more.

“Okay. No problem,” she said. And calculated in her head that there were only ninety-seven hours to go. The bulb blew in the back room on Monday evening, just as Maisie was making some headway with a box of promising-looking papers. She had developed an understandable prejudice against candlelight by this time, so had left things as they were and found a game show to watch instead, intending to return to the task the next day.

Busy daydreaming about Sacha and looking

through Sybill’s photo albums for more pictures of him (unsuccessfully), she forgot about the back room until Tuesday afternoon. Given that sunset was by then only a few hours away, she reluctantly dressed herself in heavy clothes and walked down to the village to buy a light bulb.

It was a particularly calm afternoon for a change. Usually, Solgreve was being battered by rimy gusts as early as two p.m. Today felt different; still, the air almost fragile, as though it would break if: she spoke too loudly. She walked the mossy cobbles until she came to the grocery store, bought her light bulb, wove through a narrow alley and back out to the main road. Not the faintest sliver of pale blue lightened the sky above her. The cemetery on her right seemed to stretch into infinity. She glanced at the church office, and wondered if Reverend Fowler was in there, doing his church business. She had sensed something that was almost friendliness from him on Christmas Day, albeit a strange, tight-lipped friendliness. Ninety-eight. He was way too old to have the energy to be nasty. Her forehead tingled with cold, almost

as though crystals were forming on her skin. At the same time she noticed a tiny patch of pale white on her glove. She brought it close to her face to inspect it. Another fell onto the black goatskin. She caught her breath.

Snow!
Snow!

“Oh, my god!” she breathed, excitement welling up high into her throat. She checked the arms of her overcoat. Tiny snowflakes were dropping onto her. She looked up at the sky, could see nothing. Down at the ground. Here and there, flakes were falling. She spun around, looking all around her. The flakes were growing bigger now. She caught a few in her gloves, examined them, tried to figure out their patterns.

She walked slowly, eyes wide like a child, watching the flakes settling on the road, nestling in the grass. By the time she arrived home, her front garden had a speckled layer of white across it, snowflakes were caught in the hedgerows. She almost couldn’t bear to go inside, but it was simply freezing outside.

“Tabby, it’s snowing!” she cried, wishing she had someone to tell. Cathy was out of reach, Adrian would be fast asleep, and Sacha wouldn’t be impressed. He’d probably seen it a hundred times before.

Night was approaching and she had to change the bulb in the back room before dark. She dragged a chair from the kitchen down to the room, and placed it under the light fitting, careful not to rest any of its legs on the loose board. She climbed up on it and changed the bulb without any problems, but before she climbed down from the chair she noticed the ceiling hatch. Presumably used to access electrical wires or heating ducts or some other thing she didn’t understand, but directly parallel to the loose floorboard.

Look up.

Maybe Sybill’s note on the bottom of Georgette’s diary hadn’t been a reminder to look up something in the history books. Maybe it had been a simple instruction.
Look up
.

Carefully, she moved the chair across a short distance, climbed back on and with eager hands reached for the hatch. It pushed up quite easily. She wished she had a torch so she could see the old beams in there. Or even see if there were spiders or other creepy crawlies because she had to reach a hand in and feel around before her fingers brushed a smooth cylindrical shape. Her hand closed around it and she carefully brought it out of the ceiling. A dim glass canister, which quite clearly had inside it some rolled up sheets of paper.

“Excellent.”

She left the ceiling hatch pushed slightly off-centre, climbed down again, checked the light, and took the chair back to the kitchen where she prised the lid off the canister and pulled the papers out. She recognised the handwriting immediately: definitely Georgette. She moved to the lounge room and lit the fire. Outside the single streetlight had just flickered into life on the main street, and she could see the snowflakes, falling heavily now, lit up as they dove past. In late afternoon shadows, her front garden was now under a blanket of white. So strange to see it falling so heavily yet hear no sound. She still had a bottle of wine left over from Christmas, so she poured herself a glass and made herself comfortable. The photo of Sybill and Sacha was still face down on the table, and she used it as a coaster so she wouldn’t be tempted to pick it up again.

She sipped her wine and tried to roll back the curled page edges. Smoothed them out in her lap, cosy in her firelit lounge.

Monday, 21 October 1793

Charlotte lies next to me, bleeding, yet still I find it hard to feel sympathy for her. I know she will not die; in fact she sleeps now, and looks as peaceful as any Babe. It is late evening. Virgil and Edward are gone to work, though I wish both were here. The wind is especially gusty tonight, and despite the fire and my warm gown, I am cold right at my core. I sometimes think the wind here will drive me mad. But I started to write of Charlotte.

She came to me last week and swore me into her confidence. “What I am about to tell you, you must not tell Virgil and especially not Edward. It is for women only to know. Do you promise?”

Foolishly, because I was curious to know her secret, I promised.

She nodded, satisfied. “I must procure a

miscarriage,” she said.

I was so shocked I could say nothing.

“Don’t look at me with your big, innocent eyes as though you’ve never heard of such a thing. Women have done it for centuries, Georgette.”