Miriam's Talisman (37 page)

‘No, I'm not you!' I cried. ‘I am not you!'

My hands pounded the water's surface. The trinity shattered into a thousand shards, flying away from each other on concentric waves
.

Then, suddenly, the world tilted. I screamed and snatched at the edge of the pool as the ground fell away beneath me. I was sliding over sharp-edged rocks, wet and slimed with moss. Only they weren't rocks, they were slates and I was sliding down, tumbling into emptiness. My hands clutched
at something hard and cold, and I was hanging over the edge of a roof with no ground below me, just an empty, endless pit of darkness. Rotting metal flaked beneath my hands. It creaked, then jolted and swayed. Then all was still. I held on, the sinews of my bloodless fingers taut and cramped with pain. Then I was jarred and shaken again. This time the gutter gave way in a shower of dust and I was falling down and down and down …

My whole body jolted awake. It took a moment to realise where I was and for the terror to subside. I was still alone. The fire had died in the night, and morning light was seeping into the room, cold and grey as the spent ashes in the hearth.

I
CAN'T STOP SHIVERING
. The mist is still quite thick. It swirls around me, wet and clinging, its coldness seeping through my clothes, my skin, invading every fibre of my body. I welcome it. It tells me I'm alive.

There's no one else to be seen. Perhaps I'm the sole survivor on an abandoned ship. No, that's silly. The other passengers are inside, either asleep or hanging around the bars getting steadily drunk. But I'm determined to stay on deck, even though there's nothing yet to see. My legs throb with the pounding of the engines. Somewhere out of sight, back in the mist and the darkness, water is churned into creamy trails to mark our passage. I think, at long last, it may be growing lighter, the palest whisper of dawn diffused through clouds of sea vapour. If I lean over I can make out the sea, a sheet of black glass far below me. The railing is the only colour in this cold world. They have painted it bright yellow, and there are patches of scabrous rust where the salt has bitten into it and flecks of paint speckle my hands. I'm holding on tight to this railing. It's hard and cold and wet and very, very real.

I drove all the way across-country. Motorways must have been invented by sadists for the exclusive use of masochists. My back feels like someone has drilled iron bolts through it. The journey took hours, with just the occasional stop for petrol and sludgy, service-station coffee. I suppose I should have eaten something. I did manage to catch a few hours' sleep before I came on board, but I still feel exhausted. My face is stretched tight and my eyes are red-raw as if I've been rubbing grit in them. I'd sell my soul for a hot bath.

It was only yesterday morning when I awoke in Miriam's chair, but it could have been in another lifetime and in some far, forgotten century. I sat in the cold morning light, watching the dead fire, waiting for something to happen, even though I knew nothing would. The responsibility was mine. I was the one who had to make things change. I uncurled, stiff and aching, and walked through the dim hallway to my studio. This was my territory—the only part of Miriam's world I could honestly own. As I stood in front of her portrait, she looked down at me, seemingly unchanged. Oh, but she
had
changed. This was no longer the woman I had painted.

‘Who are you?' I spoke out loud, startled by my voice reverberating through the hollow house. ‘Did I ever know you? Were you ever my Miriam?'

There was no answer. Her eyes were my eyes. Yes, all three of us, we have the same eyes, the same genetic pattern carried over the centuries. Perhaps that explains a great deal. Those eyes looked at me and into me as if they knew I was there. I think she loved me—yes, perhaps
in a way she did. Whoever she was.

‘And you loved him too, didn't you?' I whispered. ‘You loved us both. You wanted to show me what real love was, or so you said. Oh, what a wonderful bequest. What a grand and noble gesture.' I was suddenly hot, blood flushing my face and my heart racing, pulse pounding in clenched fists. ‘You made a gift of us, each one to the other. Didn't you? I suppose I was the consolation prize, wasn't I? A sort of compensation for your mortality. You thought you could go on owning him through me.' I remembered how he was on the day of her burial. I saw him, standing there, in that very place, looking at her just as I did. Then later he had turned to me for help.

Give it to me
, he had begged.
Give it to me now, while I can still ask it of you. Give it to me. Before it is too late
.

And I had failed him.

‘Did he plead with you like that? In that brief release, when he could still think for himself; before the trap closed in on him again?'

She gazed at me, unmoving and unmoved.

‘You may have loved him, but you didn't love him enough, did you, Miriam? Or is it Eriu? Whoever you are, you had no right to do this to us.
You had no right!
'

It wasn't something born of impulse. It was a deliberate, calculated act, all fury channelled and compressed into a fine edge. I walked to the kitchen. The flagstones struck coldness through my feet and I remember thinking that I must have slipped my shoes off by the fire and shouldn't forget them later. I knew which drawer to open. They lay there, a dozen or more, bright shining steel and the wood worn pale in patches by years of familiar touch. I tested each one, scraping it across the ball of my thumb.
The one I chose was large and broad, like a bright, silver fish, the handle rosewood and curved to fit the palm of my hand. I carried it back to the studio. A pale wash of sunlight had entered the room in my absence. It glinted off brush handles and metal tubes. I noticed that I had left the top off one and there was a crusting of crimson paint sticking to the tabletop.

I turned to the portrait, not sure exactly how to go about the task. Grasping the frame firmly with my left hand I pressed the point of the blade into the top corner. The canvas moved but resisted the pressure. I lifted my wrist away and thrust down, stabbing the surface. This time it gave in a jagged tear. The knife dragged down and down, each thread of the weave resisting then breaking, stopping and then moving. Where I cut through dry paint, it came away like a shower of confetti-coloured petals. Other patches were still soft, and rippled against the blade in plastic ridges. The knife reached the opposite corner and the canvas flapped loosely in the middle. I moved the knife to the top, the other corner, made a second cut to cross the first; turned the knife to the side, another gash.

Hold the frame. Stab, pull. Turn the knife.

Stab, pull.

Slash, tear.

Cut, and cut again.

Again. And again. And again.

Then it all stopped. There was nothing left to destroy. Shreds of canvas hung from the wood like the tattered remnants of a battle flag. I stepped back, gasping, the energy flowing out of me like blood from a wound. Then I placed the knife carefully on the table among the empty tubes of paint, turned, and left the room.

My feet twisted into my shoes while I searched for Greg's phone number. He wouldn't be at his office on a Sunday. That was a good thing. It would make everything easier if there were no questions, no convoluted explanations. I pressed the numbers. The secretary's voice, a polite apology, detailed instructions, bleeps and buzzes that gave me no space to speak. Eventually, when there was silence, it took me by surprise.

‘Er, Greg? It's Chloe. Look, I'm going away for a while, a few weeks. I've decided to sell the cottage.' Intention crystallised from the words as they tumbled out. ‘Can you do that for me? Sell the house, I mean. Get an estate agent or whatever one has to do?'

I looked around at the low room with its crumbly walls and dust-silted shelves, paintings barely discernible through tar-thickened varnish, graze-cracked porcelain and threadbare rugs—the battered relics of extinguished lives.

‘And everything in it. There's nothing here I want to keep. Get rid of it all.'

Sweet relief washed over me like cool, cleansing rain.

‘I'm not sure exactly where I'll be yet. I'll ring you in a few days, as soon as I have an address. I suppose you'll want the keys? I'll drop them in the post, I won't be needing them again. Oh, and thank you, Greg. Thank you for everything.'

Another assault on the studio, this time armed with boxes. I tried not to look at the wreckage on the easel. There were paints and paper to be gathered, pencils and brushes. A few small canvases, all that I could sensibly carry. Through the house with them and into the boot
of the car. My suitcase was ready: there'd been no time to unpack it. There it lay in the hall just as we'd left it yesterday, but I mustn't allow myself to think about yesterday, just pick it up, take it to the car. Then my coat, thrown on the front seat. I stood in the roadway. I had taken everything I wanted from this place.

No, there was something else. Back through the hall and up the stairs to Miriam's bedroom and the chest of drawers. It was in the bottom drawer, right at the back where I had covered it over, reburying the secret. I pulled out the shoebox with its silly yellow ribbon. One of the corners tore as I yanked it free, splitting the cardboard. No matter, it would hold.

Then down the stairs again and across the landing. That's where I had thrown Paul's jacket button out of the window. It must be still out there somewhere. Oh, God, Paul. I had forgotten all about him. I should have gone to see him. No, I couldn't face that. Not in the hospital. Not knowing that it was my fault. Could I tell him that? Perhaps I should ring? And say what, for heaven's sake? Tell him everything? Tell him the truth? Oh, right, yes, and he'd have a team of psychiatrists around here before I put the phone down.

Perhaps I could simply write to him, apologise for the way I'd behaved? But what does an apology achieve, anyway, apart from comforting the perpetrator and paralysing the victim? No, contrition was too cowardly a weapon. Paul would forgive me, of course; it was the right and proper thing to do, an act of chivalry. Then I could run away with a clear conscience and leave him to stifle his resentment beneath his stuffed shirt. No, I wouldn't do that to him. I'd leave him with his anger intact, that'd
be the least I could do. God knows he'd earned it. Could I bear the thought that he might grow to hate me? Well, let that be my penance.

The engagement ring was still in my purse. I dropped the shoebox on the table while I searched for an envelope, slipped the ring inside, wrote Paul's name on the front and propped it on the mantelpiece. Someone would find it. Someone would give it to him.

I turned to retrieve the box and saw the flute on the table. It must have been there all the while, the two woods blending together and making it almost invisible in the early light. Only then, with the sunlight dancing off the keys, did it call to me. Instinctively my hand reached out to the deep, warm glow of its body and to any trace of him that lingered there. The tune he had played surged through my head as if it would burst through and flood the room. For a moment my fingers glanced over the instrument, almost touching. For a moment I almost gave way.

I stepped back, snatched up the box of letters and ran with it to the car.