Resurrectionists (57 page)

The kettle was whistling so he pulled it off the hob and set it on the sink. He eyed the pad of writing paper he kept on the sideboard for shopping lists. A letter wouldn’t necessarily give away its sender. With determination he reached for the pad and a pen and sat at his kitchen table. He tapped the pen thoughtfully several times against the tabletop, then began to write, scribbling out and screwing up and beginning to write again. It took him an hour and his boiled water cooled on the sink, but when he was finished he felt a pleasant – if a little guilty – sense of satisfaction. He folded the letter and put it in an envelope.

What next? Deliver it to her door? He might be seen. Post it? The mail in Solgreve went via the Halletts’ grocery store. He couldn’t risk them seeing him dropping in a letter addressed to Maisie. It would have to be posted from outside town. Yet months often went by without him leaving Solgreve, and he knew nobody outside the village.

Well, almost nobody. He folded the letter in half and tucked it into another envelope which he addressed to Lester Baines, scribbled a quick note instructing him to post the letter to Maisie as soon as he got it. He picked up his keys and left the house, heading for the grocery store. Valuable days would be wasted sending the letter by this method, but as much as he wanted to help the girl, he didn’t want to incriminate himself. He had a responsibility to Solgreve. He would just have to hope and pray that she got the letter in time. And that she wasn’t so foolish as to ignore it.

“Is it weird, being in here with me while your mum’s out there?”

Sacha kissed her throat in the dark. The scent of their love-making hung heavy on the air. “No. She’s very open-minded. And anyway, she’s probably asleep by now. The witching hour is reserved for lovers.”

“And witches.”

“Well, you fall into both categories then, don’t you?”

Funny how Maisie had once thought he had some kind of exotic accent. She couldn’t hear it at all anymore, just ordinary middle-class English. Perhaps it was because she was growing used to the sound of Mila’s voice. She yawned. “I’m not a witch. I don’t ever want to be one. I love the psychism, the feeling of being connected. But I couldn’t do all that rites of the equinox stuff. I’d feel like a dickhead.”

Sacha laughed lightly. “Don’t say things like that. My mother is already concerned you’re lacking spiritual depth.”

“Should I be offended?”

“No.”

“Does she like me?” Maisie asked.

“Ma? She loves you. But don’t feel too special, because she loves everybody.”

“That’s not very discriminating.”

“No. But very charitable.” He rolled onto his back and she wriggled across to lean her head on his chest. Under his warm skin she could hear his heart beating, closed her eyes for a few moments and listened. Sweet music. Almost enough.

“What’s going to happen when I go home, Sacha?”

she sighed.

“I don’t know.”

“Will you forget me?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“I don’t know about ‘never.’ What’s the etiquette on how long you should remember somebody?”

“I guess it depends on how passionate you were about the somebody,” Maisie said, frowning. She wished, right then, that he loved her. Even though she was going home soon, she wanted him to be in love with her, to die at the thought of losing her. “Am I just a holiday romance to you?”

“I’m not on holiday,” he said.

“You know what I mean. Am I a fling?”

“You have a lot of questions tonight.”

“Well?”

His reached across and gently played with her hair.

“No, you’re not a fling.”

“What’s the difference between me and a fling?”

Midnight gusts of wind moaned softly over the eaves. The shadows of tree branches moved beyond the window.

“I know your surname for one.”

“Anything else?”

“You’re classy.”

“Me? Classy?”

“You know you are. Flings are usually with a different kind of girl.”

“Like Chris?” The words were out of her mouth before she thought better of them.

“That’s not very nice.”

“Sometimes I’m not very nice. Go on, I’m classy and you know my surname. What else?”

He chuckled and she heard it rumbling deep in his chest. She snuggled against him, pressed her legs against his.

“You’re Maisie.”

“Which means?”

“You’re special and different.”

She smiled in the dark. “Thanks.” Her fingers lingered over his chest and she sighed. She couldn’t decide if this sweet longing was pleasure or pain. She was silent for a long while.

Eventually, Sacha said, “What’s on your mind?”

“What if I didn’t go home, Sacha?” she ventured softly.

He was quiet.

“Sacha?”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“Do you think we’d . . . you know . . . do you think we’d stay together?” Making love every night, somehow remaining young forever.

“I’m not sure,” he said.

Not sure? How could he not be sure? “Why not?”

she asked, her voice trembling.

“Don’t be upset.”

“I’m not.”

“Maisie, you’re never going to be satisfied.”

“I could be satisfied,” she said. “If I got what I wanted, I’d be satisfied.”

“I don’t even think you know what you want. Not really.” He gently pushed her off and lay on his side, his eyes seeking hers in the dark. “We could be together. You could stay and we could be together, but within a year or two, I’d be holding you in my arms and you’d be looking over my shoulder, looking for something beyond me, something I couldn’t give you. Something which you were absolutely sure was the one thing that would make you happy.”

“That’s not true,” she protested.

“Maisie, it’s true. I’ve told you right from the start that I understand you, and I do.” He shook his head, touched her lips softly with his index finger. “I understand you and I know that you’d grow weary of me just as you’ve grown weary of Adrian. Even quicker, because I’m not a musical genius and I don’t have an impressive IQ and I work in a bakery.”

Tears pricked her eyes. “I’m so tired, Sacha,”

she said.

“Let’s go to sleep then.”

“Not that kind of tired,” she said. “I’m tired in my soul.”

He wrapped her in his arms, rocked her gently.

“You’ve got it all in front of you, Maisie. Don’t give up on life just yet.”

She clung to him, pressed her face into his shoulder. Hoped against hope against hope that when she went home, things could be different for her.

The heat of the afternoon hit Adrian like a wet slap as he left the cool rehearsal studio and headed for his car. The suffocating air weighed heavily on him; the sun mercilessly pounded down on the

windscreens in the car park. He worked up a sweat walking ten metres.

As he unlocked his car, he heard a rumble in the distance. He pushed his sunglasses back on his head and looked up. Behind him, the sky on the horizon had turned black with storm clouds. Their underside was sickly green-grey. Hail. He’d have to get his car under cover quickly.

Traffic in the city was congested. The following day was Australia Day, a public holiday, and people were knocking off early. He took a shortcut up through Spring Hill and hurried home through suburban streets, racing against the storm. A news report came on the radio, a severe storm warning issued for the metropolitan area. He ran an orange light and nervously eyed the clouds. When he pulled into the garage, the black had nearly eaten the whole sky, and a gusty wind had sprung up. He let himself into the house and closed the door behind him. Janet sat in the kitchen with a glass of wine, gazing out the window.

“It’s going to be a big one,” Janet said. “It’s been a stinker of a day.”

“Where’s Roland?”

“He’s meeting with some people at the Heritage. The car’s under cover so he thought he’d wait there. It looks like hail.”

Adrian dropped his car keys and came to stand by the window next to Janet. “Sure does.”

Janet looked up and gave him a smile. “How was rehearsal?”

“Good.”

“Would you like a glass of wine?”

“Um . . . Yeah, sure.”

Janet stood and went to the fridge, pulled out a half-finished bottle of chardonnay. Adrian wondered if she’d drunk the other half just that afternoon. She looked a bit unsteady.

“My mother’s solicitor called me today,” she said, concentrating very hard on pouring the wine.

“What did he want?”

“Now that Maisie’s coming back, he’s asking me about selling the cottage.” She corked the wine again and returned it to the fridge. “In fact, somebody has already made an offer on it.”

“That’s good,” Adrian said, pulling up a chair. The wind had wound up. Tree branches lashed madly back and forth outside and the guttering rattled.

“Is it good?” she asked, settling next to him and handing him a glass. “I find the whole business rather confusing.”

“Why?”

“Because I had long ago given up on the idea that I could benefit from my mother in any way.”

“I don’t know if I understand you.”

A massive flash of lightning jerked out of the sky, on its heels a crack of thunder. Luciano, their canary, cowered in the bottom of his cage. Adrian stood and pulled the cover over it, took Luciano out of the window.

Janet spoke carefully, weighing each word. “If I take money from my mother, I might have to forgive her.”

Adrian didn’t answer. One hailstone, two, clattered on the roof. The chunks of ice grew larger, more frequent, within a few moments were hammering down.

“That’s a very polite silence you’re maintaining,”

Janet said, and he almost couldn’t hear her over the hail.

“I don’t really know what to say,” he replied. “I’m sorry that you and your mother didn’t get along, but Maisie seems to have developed a fondness for her.”

“Sybill would be easier to like dead than alive. It’s hardly Maisie’s fault.”

And although he felt a bit wild and presumptuous for asking it, the question came to his lips, “Just what did Sybill do to you that was so terrible?”

Janet smiled tightly. Indicated the fridge with a tilt of her head. “Get the wine.”

Adrian did as she told him, noticed the fridge light was out. “Power’s gone off,” he said. The clouds had turned the sky to premature night-time. “Do you want me to get out some candles?”

“No, it will be fine.” She held out her glass and he tipped the wine bottle up. “Thanks,” she said. “Leave the bottle here.”

He sat down again. She took a gulp of her wine then placed the glass on the table. “My mother didn’t love me,” she said, her voice strained.

Adrian was embarrassed, didn’t know what to say.

“I don’t even know who my father was,” Janet continued. “Sybill came to Australia to be with him, but he left when I was about six weeks old. I think she blamed me for his leaving. She was very cold towards me. I tried everything to get her attention, but it didn’t work. When I began piano lessons at my neighbour’s house, she ignored it, pretended to forget about it from one week to the next. And then, as soon as I went away to music school – I was only ten years old, mind you – she left the country. Oh, she wrote to me sporadically, but I didn’t see her again until I was twenty-one, and even then I had to go to her. She never came back here.” Her voice trailed off. She gazed into her glass.

“I’m sorry,” he said, because he knew he had to say something.

“You know, Maisie was a surprise. We never

intended to have children. We were too busy with our careers. But I had her, and I raised her the best I could and I loved her, because I didn’t want her ever to feel like I felt. Like her mother didn’t love her. Can you imagine how much it hurts me that she’s gone in search of Sybill?”

The hail had turned to pelting rain. Thunder rolled nearby. “Yes, I suppose I can imagine that.” They sat without speaking for a few minutes. The sky was dark. Twilight gathered in the kitchen. “I guess I can understand now why you didn’t want her to go. But at first you were talking about Maisie being in some kind of danger.”

“She is,” Janet said.

“How can she be if Sybill is dead?”

“Do you believe there is anything beyond the grave?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think about it.”

“Let me tell you a story.” She ran her long fingers through her smooth hair. “I grew up in a town called Skyring in rural Victoria. We had a little brick house on a dirt road, and our garden backed on to a huge park. There was an empty shed on our property which Sybill didn’t use. I had turned it into a playhouse, and a lot of the local kids came by to play with me. I remember there was a bush of brown and yellow flowers – I still have no idea what kind of flowers they were, but we called them bacon and egg flowers because of the colours.” She smiled, a little embarrassed. “Anyway, all this is beside the point, and I don’t want to bore you with reminiscences. I always promised myself I wouldn’t be one of those boring people when I was old. Do you think of me as boring, Adrian?”

“No, of course not. I don’t even think of you as old.” Not with that glossy black hair, that sleek figure, those shrewd eyes.

“The war was still going at the time, perhaps a year away from ending,” Janet continued. “So I guess I was eight or nine. I had long grown used to the house being full of strangers. Sybill liked to have people around – not because she needed friends, but because she needed acolytes. She needed to be told a hundred times a day that she was wonderful, talented, wise. It became a regular thing on Wednesday nights at our house for my mother to hold quite long and involved seances. Don’t look shocked. This was her business –

she earned money from telling fortunes and contacting the dead. Good money, for she was considered one of the best.

“I had a secret crush on one of her regulars – a young man named Brian who was in his late teens, or perhaps early twenties. He was always very kind to me, while most of the others, taking their lead from Sybill, acted as though I wasn’t there. Of course, I was just a little girl, and he had no interest in me beyond the interest one takes in a child, but I had interpreted his attention for love and would dream very earnestly about being a grown-up and being married to Brian.”