Star Woman in Love (6 page)

“Don’t touch anything. Be still and listen,” a voice roared from out of nowhere, filling that weird landscape in its entirety. It tinkled like hundreds of crystal bells ringing just for me. Then it turned into the most beautiful harmony. I could finally hear the cells that make up the Earth and its inhabitants vibrate to the sound of the Ancient Tune. Unison. Universe. My heart melted into that reverberation. My being expanded to embrace the whole planet. Love filled every atom. Everything was One Entity. In a fraction of a second my surroundings and their inhabitants returned to the normality of motion, temperature and texture. I was back in my body but it didn’t feel the same. I felt unbeatable. Incredible. Alive. Sexual. Powerfully excited. Charged. Electric. Buzzing. An amazing sensation. My mobile rang in my bag and grounded me into materiality.  

“Cassandra?”  The gentle voice of the old Welshman fell on my ears like a soothing breeze on a mirror-like mountain lake.

“Lord Hughes!!!!” I sounded surprisingly chirpy and happy. “Long time no hear! How are you? How is Lady Hughes? Hello, hello, hello! I’m so glad to be speaking to you!!! You won’t believe what’s happened to me just now. I was about to fall into one of the holes in my heart when...”

“My dear girl," Lord Hughes said, “are you talking to me from a helicopter? What is that deafening noise in the background? Please tell me that my far from perfect hearing is not the reason for that!”

He giggled. He had been suffering from tinnitus for years but the condition had not deteriorated. And he’d never once feared losing his hearing. I suspected he’d brought the ‘problem’ on himself, to keep him from listening to all the rubbish that society feeds our ears with on a regular basis. Professor Hughes was incapable of sadness. Or doubt. His frequency was too high, his intelligence far too encompassing and his emotions far too balanced to have the need to feel blue. He was an aeronautics genius and the youngest Nobel laureate to be awarded the prize. He was also a renowned philanthropist, a fabulous friend and my adoptive father. I never called him dad, though. I preferred to call him by his title or his first name.

“No, no, Ralph. It’s just the Scottish weather. I’m on the Royal Mile, in the middle of a storm. You know, the Scottish weather and I have never been on the best of terms...”

“I know, I know... poor little flower... find some shelter immediately for the love of Venus... I know what the climate can be like there... and that cruel wind!”

I stood under the archway of a close. An army of ghosts ran up and down the stonework. Past, present and future overlapped like the chords of an accordion. I was invincible now. Furthermore, Lord Ralph Waldo Hughes meant protection and joy to me. He was my spiritual mentor. Just talking to him could raise my frequency and make me feel clear and stable. I could picture him as he was on the phone in his study, surrounded by huge bookcases covering the walls and the fragrant mark of knowledge and kindness in the air.

“Are you alright now?”, he said. “We are in grand form, pet. And very busy. Indeed, Henrietta is soon to visit the Scottish branch of the Society. We hear from Lydia that you have been a very active member at their meetings, and I am not surprised. Not that there is something for you to learn there, you know. You’re there as a teacher, whether you like it or not.”

I tried combing my windswept hair with my fingers. “Don’t worry, Ralph, I’m starting to like it now.”

“Nevertheless,” he said, “let me tell you why I’m phoning you now. Of course it’s for the most mundane of excuses: we’d like to wish you a happy birthday, young lady!”

I was on top of the world. The burden in my soul had completely lifted and disappeared. The Light of my purpose was shining brightly and resolutely.

“Thank you! And please, thank Henrietta as well on my behalf. I miss you both and I’m delighted at the thought of seeing her up here in Edinburgh very soon. Things are moving fast and the Shift is gaining pace by the minute. Of recent I had found it hard to remember that the future is certain, that we come from the future. Today started as a strange one. I decided to go on a walkabout and read the signs. But wait until you hear what happened to me!”

My mentor had expected that such a wonderful occurrence would take place sooner or later. But my ability to channel the Power on my birthday still impressed him.

“I reckon the timing of it has to do with your penchant for drama. Nevertheless, your knowledge of the Secret Language is beyond our best expectations.”

When we finally said goodbye, we parted with the promise of meeting soon. We never made precise arrangements. The Plan was in charge of them. As I pressed the stop button on my mobile, the rain came to a halt. The sky turned blue and subsided into two rainbows. That was another sign I needed. The Earth had also obviously heard my request.

I dashed back to Maria-Carmen’s flat without getting lost in my thoughts this time. I rang the bell. She leaned out of the window to greet me and opened the door to her apartment. When Maria-Carmen’s partly reconstructed face appeared at the threshold, my pulse began to slow down until it resumed its normal pace. She had the most pacifying effect on me. Her house was a home from home. There I could share the wonders of what had just happened to me with a considerate and knowledgeable ally.

“Cassandra, my darling, we were expecting you. Happy birthday!”

I entered her house to find she had prepared a birthday lunch for me. Lydia was there too, smiling and with a book in her lap. A tarot deck was spread out on the coffee table. The two women had been divining the future.

Maria-Carmen was Lydia’s mentor. Lydia was Maria-Carmen’s. The former was a beautiful middle-aged woman, maybe fifty, with short black hair, amber-like mestizo complexion and gentle Hispanic features. She was a Brazilian lawyer who lived in Rio for half of the year and worked as a tourist guide in Scotland for the rest. At least that was her ‘public identity’. The two of us had met during a visit to Roslyn Chapel while we were standing under the vaults of that site of ancient knowledge, reading the symbols, mesmerised by the ornate secrets. We both loved that mysterious place. We had engaged in conversation immediately and naturally: we had recognised each other as Star-kin. The Brazilian was softly spoken. She articulated her words with an impeccable stiff upper lip English accent. I loved the sound of her voice from the start. She treasured my rebellious wisdom.

Through her, I eventually met Lydia. She was from Brighton and had a distinct, down-to-earth south London accent. She was in her late fifties but looked younger in the way overweight people often do. She wasn’t conventionally beautiful but was altogether attractive. Her hair was still naturally blond and thick. Her big blue eyes always looked happy, even when she was tired. She had married a Scotsman twenty-five years previously and had two grown-up children. She had been an active member of the Godhead Society for over a decade at the time of her divorce, clinging to the ancient knowledge like you would to a life jacket in a shipwreck. She met Maria-Carmen at one of the lectures when the former was the guest speaker on the topic of mind control techniques. They since became first inseparable, and then lovers.

I took off my shoes. “Can I have a towel to dry my hair, please?”

Lydia came over to hug me. “You’re drenched and yet you look stunning: I hate you, Italian woman!”

I related the details of my out-of-time exploit over lunch. Later Maria-Carmen read the tarot for me. The Lovers’ card was laid at the centre of my spread. She winked at me. “Looks like the time has come for you to meet a valid candidate.”

I’d arranged to meet my friends from university in the afternoon, for a quick birthday drink in a pub in the Grassmarket. It was after 4 o’clock and it had already got very dark. I rushed through the Cowgate to get to my appointment. I was running half an hour late. My friends considered me challenged when it came to time-keeping. Time is a human construct that means nothing to me. That’s why its passage left very few marks on my body. My mates, however, had a different opinion: they thought it was a cultural trait which characterised Southern Europeans, and always expected me to be at least twenty minutes late.

It got very cold. As I pulled my scarf over my nose, something flew above me and made me startle. A white dove fluttered its wings only a couple of inches from my right ear, and was joined shortly by a second one on the windowsill of a derelict, abandoned house. They started cooing. Two sacred white doves: what were they doing here in Edinburgh on Valentine’s Day? They are an ancient symbol of weddings because they mate for life; the Earth had sent them my way to remind me that marriage was imminent. Who was I going to marry? That would remain shrouded in mystery for a little while longer.

Everybody was already in the pub when I arrived. Polly, my closest friend and confidante, knew about me and Gordon. Sam had clued her up.

“I hated the guy from day one. He always treated me with contempt and I know he made fun of my braces and glasses. I’m only happy to see the back of him...”

I sat down at the table in front of a glass of Bacardi and diet coke they’d already ordered for me. Finally it was really happy birthday to me!

Sam clicked his glass against mine. “Cassie, your good cheer is a brilliant surprise. Well done for getting over that idiot so quickly!”

Polly showed me a flyer which advertised an exhibition due to be staged at a famous art gallery in Glasgow early in April.

“We should go along to the opening. Gordon the Idiot is going to be there to accompany that Linda Fobbes. She has an installation at the gallery.”

A bell rang in my head. “I remember he had mentioned the title of the piece his ‘friend’ Linda, that’s how he’d referred to her, was going to exhibit. Butterflies in a cage. Ludicrous and predictable or what?”

Polly put two fingers down her mouth and pretended to vomit. “We must go. And you must look gorgeous, breath-taking even. Gordon has to realise his loss. Revenge will be sweet.”

I was tempted. I would think about it. But this conversation had slipped out of my mind and into oblivion by only two hours later. Love and revenge were to be kept on the backburner while I spent the following two months concentrating on my postgraduate dissertation and sha
rpening my newly acquired Power.

______________

Two months later in downtown Glasgow, soft rain was falling on the street and on your face. You didn’t care. You were following your inspiration. Nothing could distract your concentration from the prey of your attention. The dark waves of your chin-length locks had turned to softer curls in the damp air. You towered over the crowd of shoppers in Buchanan Street both for height and presence. The gentle loveliness of the East and the muscular beauty of the West were fused in you. You had an elegant, slow stride. You wouldn’t go anywhere without a drawing pad and a bag full of crayons. A celebrity in town: your eyes were on the pavement and your head was in the clouds. You wouldn’t go unnoticed anywhere.

Glam World magazine had mentioned your visit to the city. Two young women whispered to each other when they recognised you. You didn’t see them, busy as you were digging up the bones of an ancient memory, a long-buried feeling that you wanted to forget and had been afraid to retrieve for a long time. It had caused you so much hurt.

“I turn you into shapes and colours as liquid as sunshine,”
you had thought on a dark night.
“If I give you a name, a hue, a sensation, I will become your master and you won’t rule my life anymore...” 

That’s how you took up painting: to escape the demons of your past. You were twelve then. Thirteen years later you’d become the youngest artist to have a monographic exhibition in the prestigious Situchi Gallery, the coolest place to showcase and sell one’s work. The rest is history. Many Hollywood stars bought your paintings and sculptures. The world fell in love with you. You became an overnight success. Three years on to that date, you were in town as the star guest at the vernissage of a joint exhibition by Glaswegian artists. Life was wonderful. You were the centre of attention, and that was good. But an important someone was still missing from your life, and that bothered you. You felt incomplete on your own, which made you think about things you wanted to forget. Unbeknown to us, our paths were pulling us towards our first encounter.

The two girls called you. You turned and noticed them.

“
The blonde’s hot. Mega boobs.”

They asked for your autograph. You were used to being stopped like that. Even that kind of ‘worship’ was a call for love, from both sides. People took photographs. A small crowd gathered around you. Fans asked you about the usual question. Was it true that Layla McIntyre was going to be at the opening? Were you dating? How was your experience in Australia? Did you really go on a walkabout with an Aborigine tribe for three months? Did it give you a different perspective to your work? Was that the inspiration behind your latest production?

By means of a reply, you said: “Is that what you want to believe?”  You were everything but verbose. You could now sense a sudden magnetic pull in your chest. Your Native Australian friends had taught you to listen to this kind of heart-intuition. Ignoring the crowd of admirers around you, you turned your hazel eyes to the passing clouds in the sky, tilting your head back a little as to let the rain kiss your neck.

“New feeling. Very strong. I can’t think of any event or person clearly associated to it... Wow...”