Miriam's Talisman (32 page)

As if to justify himself, he pointed to Fifi, who appeared to be unscathed, although parked at an uncomfortable angle. The keys were still in the ignition. Iolair deposited my belongings on the back seat and then turned to hold me tightly again.

‘You won't go away again, will you? You must never leave me.'

‘No, I'll never leave you.'

‘Until you have no choice.'

I knew he was thinking about Miriam.

He turned the engine and yanked the gear stick into reverse. I was still fumbling with my seat belt as the car jerked out backwards across the aisle. Then we were moving forward and down the slope towards the exit.

‘Oh, just a minute. You need to pay. We have to go back and get the ticket stamped to let us out.'

Iolair turned to me and winked, urging the car towards the barrier. The red and white bar zoomed straight at us. I gasped and ducked, but it lifted lightly into the air and we slipped under it. Twisting around to watch it retreat, I didn't realise the lights were about to change at the junction. I turned in time to see a flash of red and the look of horror on a lorry driver's face.

‘God, what are you doing?' I clung to the dashboard, shaking. For several moments I forgot to breathe. ‘I think it might be better if you let me do the driving.'

‘Nonsense. Do you think I can't do this?' He turned to me, reaching out to stroke my cheek with the back of his hand. ‘You must not be afraid. You're with me. Nothing can hurt you now.'

‘I'm trying to believe you.'

‘Oh, but you must believe. Belief makes anything
possible.' He grinned and his eyes shone with delight.

I could not help but laugh with him. Like a child on a bumper ride, he swung the car back and forth, jumping ahead of one car then another. Should I explain what the indicators were for? No, that would just complicate matters. Instead I held on in silence, my heart kicking against my ribs. Then we moved into a dense stream of traffic.

‘Oh, this is no good. I want to show you what I am capable of.'

For once I was thankful the M25 was jammed. Whatever he did, at least he would have to do it slowly. There was stillness before he spoke again.

‘I'm glad you decided to keep the cottage. I wouldn't want to go away from there.'

This came at me suddenly, taking me unawares. I had to think for a moment before I realised that it was his home, had been for a long, long time. There were many things from the past I would have to get used to.

‘No, I won't part with it. I think I'm in love with it, too,' I said. ‘Ever since that first time I went to see Miriam.'

‘Ah, yes.' He smiled wistfully, as if remembering. ‘But if you did want to go, if you really wanted to be somewhere else, that would be all right too. Anywhere in these islands. Whatever you wanted.'

‘Was that how it was with Miriam? Whatever she wanted?'

I'm not sure if it was curiosity alone that prompted the question. Was it possible that I could be jealous?

‘Yes, whatever she wanted. And whatever I wanted. We had to compromise sometimes. I didn't always win.'

‘Is that where all that money came from? From you?
Greg said she made good investments.'

‘She liked to play the stock market. She wasn't very good at it, really, made some bad choices. I had to readjust things sometimes, that's all. It was just to please her.' He looked at me very seriously. ‘We can always make some more money if you want. I'm quite a skilled financier now.'

‘Oh, no. No, thank you. I think I've got enough.'

‘We can enjoy it, you know. There's so much we can do, Cliohna. So much I want to show you. Anything is possible. You understand that, don't you?'

‘I think I'm beginning to understand.' Who was I fooling? Of course I understood nothing.

The car lurched forward and veered left on to a slip road.

‘Ah, that's better, some space. Now I can show you some real driving.'

He turned the wheel and we joined the M11, sliding across to the outer lane amid a blaze of flashing headlights and blaring horns. Iolair responded by pushing his foot down hard and my little red car shook as the needle climbed up to ninety.

‘There is a speed limit, you know!'

‘Don't be silly, Cliohna. There are no limits.'

I clung on tightly, my feet braced against the floor, and found that I was laughing. He caught my hand in his. I was aware of the coolness of his fingers.

‘I would never let anything, or anyone, harm you. I promise you that.' Then he looked back to the road again, sparkling with excitement. ‘Come on, relax. This is going to be fun! I want you to enjoy it.'

The speedometer swung right over. Ahead of us a blue van loomed closer and closer. I clutched his shoulder and
squealed as he lurched to the left and overtook on the middle lane.

‘You can't do that! You can't overtake on the inside!'

He looked at me intensely and reproving. ‘This is my game. My rules. Watch this.'

He moved into the outside lane where, ahead of us, a coach was trying to overtake two lorries. Children jostled and waved from the back seat as we sped towards it. There was nowhere to go. I braced myself against the head rest. The window bore down on us. I think I screamed. And then the road ahead was clear—the coach had gone. Vanished! No, there it was—a miniature reflection in the wing mirror, far behind us and still overtaking the lorries.

‘What happened? How did you …'

‘I'll show you. Watch closely. I'll go slower this time.'

Iolair gripped the wheel, heading for a red sports car. The driver was obviously determined to stay ahead of us. This time we drove straight through him—not around or under, but straight through. There was a whoosh of coldness and a blur of colour, like driving through a waterfall. Then we were ahead. I twisted around and caught the terrified eye of the young man at the wheel in his Armani suit. I couldn't resist giving him a wave.

It was a fairground ride, furious and terrifying. We overtook one of those space cruiser things, by driving through the crash barrier: the grey metal strips ran straight into Fifi's engine and down between the front seats. Then, suddenly, inexplicably we were bumping along the hard shoulder. It was like a film cut and rejoined in all the wrong places. We would be in one lane then, suddenly, we would be in another, or driving up the embankment. A
dozen times he took us to the edge of destruction, turning the world around at the last second. Cars were coloured streaks that vanished in our wake. Iolair was electric, his nearness intoxicating. I was drunk on the danger and the outrage of it all.

Eventually it came to an end. Fifispun onto a slip road and slowed to a modest seventy. Tears streamed from my eyes and my head swam. I don't know if I was relieved or dismayed that the journey was over. As my heart slowed to a steady pound, Iolair looked smug.

‘I think we're nearly home,' he said.

He drove sedately through the village, demonstrating the skilled precision of a driving tutor conducting a master class.

It had been less only a week, but the landscape had changed. Most of the autumn colours had fallen. Bare branches threw lace netting against the sky and birds jostled for places along the telephone wires and made sudden, wheeling forays into the still air. The cottage looked bleak, the windows dark and the pathway blocked with heaps of wind-blown leaves. But the ivy was still green, intensely dark and lush, binding the walls against the winter. As we opened the front door there was a faint mustiness. The rooms were cold, but a fire would soon warm them. The stairs creaked in protest at our invading feet. Sunlight, still strong in the noonday, found its way through the upstairs windows to light the white bed covers and draw lattice diamonds on the walls.

Was it such a short time ago? I can count the hours, and yet it could have been in another lifetime. Perhaps it was.
I still taste the salty sweetness of his skin; feel the coolness of his hands moulding the curve of my back. I touch the delicate nodes of his wrists and the shining sweep of the bone in his calf. His shoulder blades, white and angular, are the budding promise of wings. Long, velvet lashes brush my cheek, our faces secluded in darkness by his hair, let loose and falling around us. The only light is the amber glow of his eyes. I feel the tautness of his arms and the force of his hands and the lightness of his fingertips, soft as the brush of feathers. The beat of one wing follows upon another, then another. A rising, a lifting, a tender flight, borne aloft upon gentle air. I am carried against the sky, held on high amid the sudden rushing of hot winds and the piercing sweetness of sunlight. And still the throbbing of wing upon wing.

Yes, that is how I remember it.

And when it was over he spoke to me in that strange language, or perhaps it was to himself that he spoke. It didn't matter that I couldn't understand the words. The sounds were sweet notes, tender as a lullaby. I curled into the curve of his body listening to the murmuring of his voice until it was lost in deep waves of warm breath and I saw his eyes closing. His eyelids were the soft purple bloom of dusty grapes upon the vine.

‘My Elven Lord,' I whispered. ‘My Faerie King.'

For a while, as afternoon light crossed the floor, I lay and watched his stillness. Then I, too, drifted away. In that last moment, between waking and sleeping, I heard a sound. An earthly sound, it was, a sound from that other world of everyday. It had an urgency that would once have summoned my attention, but that was before everything changed.

I
DIDN'T DREAM
, yet some part of me was aware of the movement of time.

That sound again. It cut a jagged line through the hushed house. I woke instantly. The noise stopped as abruptly as it had started.

There had been no transition from sleeping to waking, no gentle amnesia to hold back the tidal wave of memory. I was fully aware of the man who slept beside me—that is, I was aware of his presence. I knew little of him, or of myself for that matter. I knew I was no longer a shadow-puppet, jerked on a stick against a two-dimensional backdrop: a flimsy paper cut-out thing of no consequence. I had been transmuted into a golden stranger by the alchemy of this child of air. We lay in our crucible bed, his arm heavy on my shoulder. I could feel his breath against my ear, like the familiar sighing of the sea echoed through a shell.

The room was moving towards darkness now, the walls washed in a softer, blue-grey light. I was surprised to find myself feeling both thirsty and ravenously hungry, then realised it must be hours since I had last had a meal. I
rearranged his arm and slid gently from the bed. Wrapping something warm around my shoulders, I padded across the landing and down the darkened staircase, taking care to avoid the familiar pattern of creaking floorboards. I would surprise him with something to eat. Did he eat food? He certainly drank plenty. Anyway, I bet there was nothing in the house. Passing through the sitting room I glanced at the culprit, the cause of my rude awakening. The telephone crouched in the corner, the message recorder winking at me with its one red eye.

There was a sealed carton of orange juice in the fridge. I filled a glass and carried it through to the sitting room where I stood by the window looking out over the orchard. The sun had tipped below the horizon, embossing the sky with brash streaks of gold leaf against heavy, hanging curtains of dark purple. There was no rosy afterglow, no promise of a bright tomorrow.

From the corner of my eye I could see the little red light, insistent, demanding. It wouldn't be ignored. Perhaps if I let it run it would go away and leave me in peace. I pressed the button and returned to the window, sipping from my glass, the juice ice-cold and sharp in my mouth.

There was a stream of messages, most of them expected. I recognised Greg's voice, something about dividends. The orchard was almost bare now, the grass overlong and strewn with wind-fallen apples, brown where the wasps had gorged themselves. Then Hannah was speaking. I should have phoned her, let her know I had returned. I promised myself I would call her back. But not now. It occurred to me that I knew nothing about gardens and gardening. I wondered if Iolair would know. Doubtless he could make flowers grow in extraordinary, unexpected
ways. I couldn't imagine him mowing the lawn. I became aware of Marcus's voice. He sounded excited: the little leather book I'd left with him, a translation, things I no longer needed to see or hear. All that was irrelevant now.

Then there was Angie's voice.
It's half past two now. Did you manage to get home all right?

That must have been the call I had heard as I fell asleep. I wondered how long he would sleep for, if I should wake him. Angie sounded agitated, unlike her. Was she saying something about Paul? The machine clicked off. A word hung in the air.
Injuries
, her voice had said.

‘Injuries.'

Then silence closed in, smothering it. I wished the room would remain silent forever. There was something malevolent about that machine, the way it squatted in the corner, a fat little toad with a spiteful red eye. It wasn't to be believed, the malicious little liar. Ignore it. Dangerous even to touch the thing. I would have to force myself to cross the floor, make my hand press the button and rerun the last message; will myself not to listen.