Deara felt the tension relax in the narrow shoulders. Something had moved. Something was different. A darkness had passed, though she knew not what it was. She bent to kiss the old woman. She had never kissed her before.
At her touch the half-closed eyes opened. They seemed to focus on her face and yet Deara could not feel sure that it was she whom Merdaine actually saw. But suddenly Merdaine’s eyes were smiling.
‘Have a good journey, my little one, both you and your friend in another time. Here, I give you a parting gift of what you already have. For you both, and for all of your kind, who have love in your hearts, I give you the sign of healing.’
Deara felt the soft touch of the kingcups against her wrist and watched the pale tide gently erase from the familiar face both the brown of wind and weather and the lines of wisdom and experience.
The weight in her arms grew heavy. The spirit had flown like a lark into a summer sky, but the frail body breathed a little and swallowed before it was finally still.
Only then did Deara lay the old woman gently back on the couch and gather up the blooms which had slid from her open hand and scattered across the woven rug. For a moment she cradled the flowers in her hands as she would a newborn child. Then, looking down at the sharpening lines of Merdaine’s face, she said over again to herself, ‘If you do as your heart speaks, then in your sorest need, help will come. But you must trust that it will come.’
She put the kingcups into a pitcher of spring water in the farthest corner of the hut. Then, taking a deep breath, she crossed to the doorway, took up the corner of the door-hanging and standing on tiptoe, tied it up by its leather thongs.
The sunlight, lower now, but still fierce, dazzled her as it poured round her, filling the hut with light. For a moment, she shut her eyes and heard her heart cry out its own farewell. Then, only half aware of what she did, she knelt in the dust to the left of the door, turned towards the west and began to recite in a voice she barely recognised, the welcome to Nodons, the giver of life within life, the bringer of life beyond life.
When I woke it was quite dark and yet my eyes felt dazzled as if by strong sunlight. For a moment, I had no idea what had happened or where I was.
Gradually the dim outlines of my room took shape around me. It was much too dark to see the face of my watch, but beyond the undrawn curtains the sky was pricked with stars. Faint moonlight made pale patches on the wallpaper and caught the bright petals of a kingcup in a glass vase on my table by the window.
Memory flowed back as I burrowed deeper into the soft hollow of the duvet where I had lain down, just as I was, when I staggered back from the garden exhausted after the throbbing pain of that fearsome headache. Startled, I realised that I’d had a full-blown migraine and not a trace of it was left. Not only had the pain completely vanished but there was no hint at all of the nausea that usually lingers long after the pain itself has gone. Apart from my cold arms, chilled by the flow of night air through the open window, I was so blissfully warm and comfortable that I felt I never wanted to move again.
For a little while I lay quite still just enjoying the wonderful sense of being free from pain. Then I began to recall the dream from which I’d woken, an intensely vivid dream full of detail still fresh in my mind. Unlike those dreams that evaporate the moment you wake up and try to catch them, this one was crystal clear and so absorbing I found I could rerun it like a video I had made.
‘Now I know what her name is,’ I said out loud, amazed that it had only just struck me.
Her name was Deara. She had just been bereaved, as I had. But how different her situation. She had loved the old woman who had died in her arms. With her gone, Deara would be lonely and vulnerable. I didn’t see myself as having those problems as a result of losing my mother.
The old woman’s name was Merdaine. I whispered it over and over again. I was sure I’d heard it before, somewhere. But nothing came to me. I always forget that the harder you try to remember something the less likely you are to succeed. So I tried to put it out of mind and hoped it would come of its own accord.
I still felt very reluctant to move and break the spell of comfort and well-being that enveloped me, but I had needs that would wait no longer. I was desperate for a pee and I was absolutely ravenous.
The fluorescent lights in the kitchen are hard on the eyes at the best of times. Tonight they were unbearable. Hastily, I poured myself a bowl of cornflakes, stuck it on a tray with a jug of milk and a spoon and carried it down the hall to the sitting room.
A small sliver of moon was rising above the trees down by the road. It cast long shadows across the lawn, as I stood by the window, munching devotedly. Outside, everything was still. Not a single car whizzed past on the road. Not even a bird rustled on its roost in the shrubbery. I thought of all that had happened since William Neill dropped me at the foot of the drive after church. I found it hard to believe I could have experienced so much, in such a short time, and feel so incredibly different at the end of it.
The sitting room clock struck twelve. I laughed aloud. No, my ball gown was not going to turn to rags. I felt quite clear in my mind that what I’d been given was not going to disappear. But I was equally sure that it was up to me to decide exactly what I did with it and whether I was willing to accept what might grow from my experience in the weeks to come, while I dealt with the business that had brought me back to this house and led me to re-encounter the life I had once lived within its limits.
Surprised at how very calm I felt, despite my rising sense of excitement at the prospect, I went back to the kitchen, made some coffee and spread a thick slice of bread with honey. I couldn’t remember when bread and honey had tasted so good. I drank my coffee, left cup and crumby plate on the draining board with the empty cornflake bowl, rinsed my fingers and ran back upstairs to my room.
As I went in, it was bright enough to see the blue notebooks sitting on my table. I paused only for a moment before I drew the curtains together, switched on my Anglepoise, unscrewed the top of my pen and began to write.
This time, there was no problem. I had something to set down that I couldn’t wait to begin. It must be written now, before even another minute should pass. The sharpness and vividness of what I had experienced today mustn’t be lost or allowed to dull with the passage of time. And the words came without deliberate thought and almost without any effort at all.
It was two o’clock in the morning when I put down my pen, pulled off my clothes and crawled back under the crumpled duvet, but when I woke next morning and saw what I had written I was so excited by it I ran downstairs full of a bubbling sense of joy. It was so strong that even the dreary list of jobs I jotted down while I drank my second cup of coffee could not extinguish it.
‘A touch of the Monday shit,’ my friend Sheila would say. She has three children under ten and a husband passionate about all kinds of do-it-yourself. She dreads Monday morning. Left to face the wreckage of the weekend, she steels herself for that moment, back from school, when she pushes open the front door, walks through the empty house and sizes up the full enormity of the task that faces her.
Today I would be keeping her company. The estate agent was coming on Wednesday, so the debris generated by the funeral and our attempts at a preliminary sort would have to be dealt with and the whole house made clean and tidy. And then, there was the woodwork.
I sighed. Beautifully painted only two years ago, the white woodwork throughout the house had suffered a year of Mother’s cigarette smoke and a year of neglect. Sandy and I had tried wiping a damp cloth over one of the worst bits. We’d produced a dirty streak and confirmed the source of the nasty smell we noticed the moment we stepped into the closed up rooms. There was masses of it; doors, skirtings, picture rails, banisters, windows, built-in shelves and assorted ledges.
I put on the immersion, heated up enough water for a home confinement and got stuck in. I really did surprise myself. Whether