Miriam's Talisman (4 page)

So I drove on and out of town, until the houses parted and opened onto fields, black and stubbled from the recent harvest. Cambridge, though a city, is small and huddled at one corner of the fenlands. The suburb where Hannah
still lives and where I was brought up has long since been absorbed by the amoebic spread of development, and now it's a jumble of Victorian brick dwellings peppered with modern houses, but all neat and presentable. Beyond this, one has to pass through flat, open fields to reach the circlet of villages that surround the city, yet somehow retain their separation, like maiden aunts pulling tight their skirts. It is a landscape of skies, of grey clouds, raw winds and crouching hedgerows; whole counties reclaimed from the bogs, drained and ploughed and as medieval as the workers who dug its ditches.

Miriam's cottage is in the village of Grantchester. Where else? The place is suspended in time, just like its church clock that, in the famous poem, ‘stands at ten to three'. The clock's still there and there's honey still for tea, taken beneath the apple trees in the same Orchard Tea Gardens where Rupert Brooke and his circle reclined in deckchairs to share their latest stanzas.

I was about fifteen when I started going there. Even then I was usually in a state of high emotional intoxication, as you mostly are when you're fifteen. There was always some adolescent crisis, an outraged ego to be soothed, some dark sin to confess. Miriam would understand. Sometimes it was a grand achievement that I was bursting to share with someone. Who else was there? Whenever I needed to unburden my soul or to seek wise counsel I would head for Miriam's cottage. I've travelled the road to Grantchester so many times over the years that I know every curve and bridge, every crack in the footpath where oak tree roots bulge like blisters, every white washed wall that teeters along the grass verge.

I remember the first time I went there on my own.
It wasn't long after my father had left. I can't even remember now what awful event it was that sent me running to my grandmother. Some argument with my best friend, I think, probably resolved the next day, but at that moment I had hated her and was never going to speak to her again. Ever! I rushed from the school gates, knowing that Hannah would not be home for several hours and I needed to justify my outrage to someone. I had plenty of other girlfriends only too eager to take sides. There were neighbours, family friends, no end of places to run to and shoulders to cry on. So why Miriam? I've always put it down to impulse but, with what I know now, I'm no longer sure.

I had to cycle several miles from my city school and along the Grantchester road, but on a warm day in late summer, on the swiftest of bicycles and spurred on by a tragedy to rival those of ancient Greece, the distance was eaten up in minutes.

I didn't stop to think if she would be there, or of the reception I might get by just turning up out of the blue. I hadn't seen Miriam for several months, and then only briefly and very formally. This was ‘post-rift', of course. My early years were divided into the ‘pre-rift' and ‘postrift' eras. There was a time when Miriam had been an everyday part of our lives, although even then I was aware of a coolness between her and my mother. This seemed to centre on me and, as children do, I gained a sense of power from being in control of two opposing adult forces. Then, on my ninth birthday, I caused those underlying currents to erupt into the full confrontation that was to divide our family. Since then, there had been visits from Miriam at Christmas and birthdays, but
those were brief and tense—an exchange of gifts and civilities and a regretful departure. We never visited her. When Richard abandoned us, I had hoped that Hannah might look to Miriam for support. But she didn't. Of course I was aware that my mother would be furious if she knew where I was heading, but I wasn't going to let
that
stop me.

I slowed down when the road reached the edge of the village, panicked by the sudden fear that I might not be able to find the house. I started to think of turning back. Then suddenly there it was, emerging from a tangle of willow trees and beech hedges. It's a sprawling old building of crumbly red brick and tiles, and a dishevelled thatch, a home that passes from generation to generation, loved and unkempt. The garden is still as it was then, wild and rambling, attempting escape by scrambling over broken walls. I skidded to a halt amid a screech of brake rubber and the pneumatic pumping of my own lungs. Then I became aware of other sounds: the rustle of willow leaves, birds squabbling over hedgerow berries and the rasp of grasshoppers.

I leaned my bicycle against a bush and crept up the garden path, fearing Miriam would not be at home or that she would be angry at my sudden appearance. Before I was halfway to the door, it opened and she stood there smiling, her arms open, as if I were expected and she impatient for my arrival. And then we were both hugging and tearful either side of the threshold.

‘Come in, girl, come in. Let me look at you. Oh, you've grown so tall. And so pretty. Come along, I'm gathering apples—you can give me a hand. They've been abundant this year and they're ripe early.'

Somehow I found myself in the orchard. We collected fruit fallen among the long grass, and she told me the country names of the wild flowers. Afternoon sunshine was hot on my back and wasps rose in angry formations when we stole away their feast. She never asked why I had come or if Hannah knew where I was. We both knew that she didn't, and from that moment we entered into an unspoken conspiracy.

We took the fruit into her kitchen and she brewed up some tea, a strange, soothing blend that was both bitter and sweet.

‘We must make apple pie in honour of the occasion!' she said. I was always startled by her accent. She seemed so utterly English that I always forgot that she was born and raised in America. ‘Here, you can peel and core the apples while I make the pastry.'

Before I knew what was happening, I was set to work at the kitchen table. Things weren't going the way I'd intended, but somehow this was more comfortable and I went along with it.

‘The apple is quite a special fruit, you know.' Miriam tipped flour into the pan of an old-fashioned kitchen scale. ‘It has all kinds of mystical associations. Did you know that?'

I shook my head.

‘Well, in many countries people believe that each tree has its own elemental, a sort of guardian spirit, that could bestow magical powers on anyone who ate the fruit. In Ireland the apple tree was considered to be sacred. They thought that if anyone harmed the tree the gods would be angry. There's a poem called “The Triads of Ireland”.

‘Do you know what that means?'

Another shake of my head, fearful she might stop. I'd no idea what she was talking about but I was bewitched by the sound of her voice.

‘It means that if they cut down an apple tree they would have to make a sacrifice of a living animal to recompense the gods. Otherwise some terrible disaster would befall them. It would have been a goat or a sheep. Some believe that the Druids made human sacrifices, but I'm not too convinced about that.'

The pie was made and most of it eaten. We talked for ages; at least she talked and mostly I listened as she wove magical tales in and out of the conversation. I had stumbled upon another world, wedded to another time. The trials and tragedies of everyday life became inconsequential there. I never did get around to telling her why I'd come.

And that was the first visit.

I made some excuse for being late home, and that was the first lie. The first of many. At the beginning, the visits were infrequent and clumsily camouflaged, but as I began to see Miriam more, the excuses became increasingly elaborate and fell easily from my tongue. ‘I'm staying after school for netball practice.' ‘Sorry I'm late, went round to Julia's to go over maths revision.' I knew which lies would appeal to my mother and I tried my hardest to please her with them. Of course it became easier as I grew older and less obliged to explain my whereabouts.
But I still did not tell. When I was twenty I moved in with my friend, Angie, and a succession of ‘third girl to share central city terrace'. There was no longer any need to lie, but by then it had become such a habit I saw no reason to stop.

I parked the car and walked up to Miriam's door, the same as all the other times; only this time I could feel the emptiness wrapping itself around the place, the silence as palpable as a pall. It was only the day before that I'd found her ill, yet already the rooms were cold and smelt slightly musty, as if they were becoming accustomed to their abandonment. I don't know why, but I was surprised to find everything else just as we'd left it.

I threw my bag and coat down on the dining table, scattering the eternal piles of work notes. Sunlight poured through the leaded window, setting dust motes dancing in their own spotlight. How I loved this room, the rich shambles of it all. Things piled on other things or clustered in groups with no rhyme or reason other than they looked comfortable together. Shells and stones and pictures, china whole and broken, new things and old things, worthless and priceless. Their quality and value didn't matter, only that they were pleasing to the eye and a joy to the spirit. I could not bear the responsibility of their being mine. I circled the space, fingering objects that I knew well and loved, and the touch was almost painful.

Had he ever been there, the man I'd met in the café? Where would he have sat? Not next to the inglenook, no, surely she would not let him use her favourite chair. I was allowed to sit there sometimes, but no one else. Perhaps
the sofa, leaning back into the cushions, his long fingers stretched out to catch the warmth from the fire. Or maybe he sat at the table. That must have been it: he had to be a student or a fellow researcher. He would have sat next to her, making notes from her handwritten pages, their heads bent together over some minor point of Gaelic diction. Perhaps he had come seeking information from her collection of books, looked something up, borrowed one even.

The line of bookcases covered one wall, shelves bowed under the weight of volumes bound in dark, dilapidated leather. Most were in English, but some were in other languages; many were in Gaelic, which I recognised but could not read. Then there was that special row of shiny hardbacks in dark green with gold lettering:
History and Legends of Ancient Ireland
by Miriam Shaw,
Celtic Gods and Kings
by Miriam Shaw,
A Strange and Mystic Land
by Miriam Shaw…Eight of them in all, lined up in order of age, the last and latest supported by a curled ram's horn set in silver.

Many hours I had sat, cocooned in the big armchair, dipping into these books and reading snatches of mystical tales, myths and legends, while Miriam worked at her table. Better still were the times when she would recount these stories to me herself. When I was a child I took in every word of her magical tales of kings and strange beasts and fairies and magic spells. I relived every image until they became part of my conscious perception of the world. Even as a young woman I never tired of listening, although the nature of the stories had changed. She began to tell me of the enchantment of love and birth and death. I learned that there were different kinds of pain from that
inflicted by the sword. Hungry for every word, I neither believed nor doubted. Never once in all those years did I think to ask how much of it, if any, was true.

I found myself heading for the back of the house, and walked through to the little sun-drenched room that had already been made mine. As I opened the door, there she was, smiling down at me from the stillness of the canvas. I thanked God the portrait was almost finished and I would be able to complete it without her. How different this woman looked from the Miriam I had held the day before. Everyone says that I look like her, and I can understand that, but I am also aware of the differences. The high cheekbones that gave her classical beauty, on me are exaggerated into an elfin face. Her hair was still thick and silky and, although recently silver grey, it had once fallen in waves of dark amber. Mine is a lighter red and corkscrews into curls. But we have the same eyes—peridot green, like water ice. Her eyes looked down at me then, bright and clear, and her skin was smooth and taut. Yet she was over seventy. It was outrageous, the way she defied the passage of time.

The room had been a present on my sixteenth birthday. When I had first arrived I thought she had forgotten. As usual I found her busy at the dining table, that huge circle of polished wood that could rival King Arthur's.

‘Oh, it's you, girl.' I had my own key and had let myself in. ‘Well, come on through. Is that the time already? I was so involved in this translation. Perhaps you could make us some tea?' And she bent over her work again.

I returned from the kitchen with a tray and poured us each a cup, setting hers beside her on the table. I waited for some word, some acknowledgement that this was a
special day. Surely she could not have forgotten? She didn't even look at me.