Moon Song (3 page)

Darshan tapped a filing cabinet. ‘We can go through that lot after dinner.’

He took her to an excellent Thai restaurant in the Close. They went early and came back early so she could browse his accounts. He sat cross-legged on the floor, reading, while she went through the books. It was obvious he trusted her, he’d just unlocked the
file-cabinet and told her to rootle to her heart’s content.

‘No secrets from a partner,’ he’d said.

She’d been impressed, felt confident, or reasonably so, for the huge step of jumping out of her safe, known, hi-flying job at the paper into this venture. After an hour she closed the books and looked up at him, a half-smile on her mouth.

‘Well …?’ Darshan asked.

‘I think so,’ she told him. ‘Ask me again on Sunday.’

‘Good. Now, how would you like to meet some interesting locals?’

He took her a few doors up the Close and into what looked like a good wine bar.

‘Ale bar!’ Darshan corrected her, laughing at her nonplussed expression.

It was well but softly lit, white plaster walls panelled up to a dado rail in a golden coloured wood, solid oak floor underfoot. He led her to a table in the corner where two men sat with the remains of a meal in front of them.

‘Jamie, Paul. This is Isoldé Labeale, my high-powered London journalist friend,’ Darshan announced, eyes alight with mischief.

Isoldé coloured up, smiled, held out a hand.

Jamie stood up and took it in a powerful grip.

‘Good to meet you,’ he said, looking straight into her eyes.

Paul’s grip was strong too, but his eyes had a softer expression, echoing the mischief in Darshan’s. Isoldé pulled herself together.

‘Good to meet you too.’ She included them both in her smile.

‘I can tell I’ve been set up here.’ She rolled her eyes and glared at Darshan.

They all laughed.

‘What’re you on?’ Darshan asked.

‘Riggwelter,’ Paul said.

‘I’ll get a jug.’ Darshan disappeared to the bar.

Paul pulled out a chair for Isoldé and they all sat down.

‘I gather Darshan’s not told you who we are.’ Jamie smiled. ‘I run Exon Radio, the local station. That’s why he introduced you with fanfares.’

‘I’ve heard of you, even listened a bit. Sort of Classic and Jazz FM without the continuous adverts. You’ve had some interesting interviews too.’

‘Thank you. Yes.’ Jamie said. ‘You hit the spot with that description. We both liked Classic FM when it started out,’ he said, giving a sidelong glance to Paul. ‘But it’s impossible now it gets all its revenue from advertising. We’re trying another way.’

Isoldé looked the question.

‘Later. Maybe.’ Jamie grinned, watching the journalist at work on extracting the story. ‘What about you? Darshan said he was trying to get a friend of his down, and that you might be interested in some radio work.’

‘Asshole!’ Isoldé glared up at Darshan who had just arrived with a large jug of beer in one hand and two half-pint mugs in the other.

‘Isoldé!’ Darshan’s large brown eyes looked limpidly into hers, his mouth drooped. He set down the mugs and filled them, then refilled Jamie’s and Paul’s.

‘The only thing that’s saving you is that jug of beer. Put the damn thing down so I can kick you properly. And,’ she glared, ‘don’t you dare flirt with me!’

‘But you love it …’ Darshan finally put the jug down.

A lot later, stretched out, alone, under the duvet on Darshan’s sofa-bed, she watched the stars through the dormer window and sighed contentedly. Darshan had a loft conversion flat in Northernhay Street. There was a bit of traffic noise, an occasional group of loud students, but it was so different from London. Now, lying in bed, Isoldé felt contented. It was a huge jump to leave the safety of the London she’d known for the last sixteen years, since she’d left home and Belfast, but the job Darshan was
proposing, and the move, pulled her strongly. She was doing OK at the paper but London horrified her since the clampdown after nine-eleven. That wasn’t how she wanted to live. Exeter felt good. She’d see what the rest of the weekend brought.

Next morning, Darshan gave her the keys to the flat over the shop in Cathedral Close, telling her to go and look around for herself. She climbed the stairs to the top of the building and unlocked the door to what had been the attics. ‘He must be doing well,’ she thought, standing by the closed door, the keys in her hand. ‘He’s leased the whole place.’

She turned the key and pushed open the door of the flat. The main room faced south, over the Close, getting all the light through three big Georgian windows. The walls were simple cream-coloured plaster, the wooden floor had been sanded and oiled so it glowed. The window frames were oiled wood as well. The whole effect was of light and warmth. She went into the kitchen, simple again but enough worktop space and cupboards, one big window over the sink to give light.

The wooden, open-tread staircase curled up into the roof-space. Up there it was all peaks and points, lined with more of the goldcoloured wood, one huge room taking up most of the space. Dormer windows showed the cathedral roof and tower, giving light. A door to her left led to the bathroom. Half tiled, with a big mirror over the bath as well as the wash-basin, it gave a sense of space as well as light. She came back into the bedroom. It felt good, she could be happy here. She realised she’d made up her mind already and gave a wry grin to the Bluetit clinging to the window frame; he was peering at her from each eye in turn. Something else clicked. She didn’t have birds in town, not close like this. ‘I could have a feeder on the window,’ she thought.

It was a new thing for her. There’d been no birds at the windows
of the various London flats she’d lived in. Nor the house off the Falls Road where she’d grown up.

Darshan’s cats were a new thing for her too. There’d been no cats to share their life in London. He’d told her last night he had grown up with cats and that moving to Exeter had made it possible to have them again. These were ginger, half-Maine Coons; one was a huge long-haired tom who really looked the part. His sister was inexplicably tiny and delicate with short fur but exactly the same markings and a whole load of attitude. They were beautiful, soft. They’d nuzzled her, purred her to sleep last night. ‘I’m not ready for cats yet,’ she told the room. ‘One day …’

She remembered the soft, warm pressure of their bodies against her back, it had been comforting. The country, Isoldé thought of Exeter as the country, meant animals. She liked animals but had very little experience of them. She had watched as Darshan talked to his cats as he got them their breakfast, while coffee brewed for Isoldé and himself. It had definitely been in that order of preference, cats first, she laughed to herself now. She’d been fascinated how they came to him, watching their intelligent expressions, how they seemed to know exactly what he was saying. She still had no real idea of how they thought, indeed they felt a bit foreign, alien. Or perhaps, she wondered, it was her who was the alien. But she felt she would like to live with a cat. Later, when she was settled in.

She sat in the window seat reflecting. Running a business would be a new thing for her, but that was OK, she enjoyed a challenge. It was part of what had pulled her away from the Falls Road, the possibility of change, going somewhere new, somewhere where there wasn’t the continual fear of bombs and knee-capping’s.

She had arrived in London, aged eighteen, to do a degree in journalism and media studies at the City University. Working holidays and weekends at Forbidden Planet meant she could
afford a life and that had been a challenge too, everything was so very different from Belfast. Growing up at all during The Troubles had been hard. Her mother had been killed when she was just three months old, Isoldé never knew her, shot by the IRA, suspected of fraternising, so Aunt Branwen had told her. Aunt Branwen had adopted her then, there’d been no-one else. Dad had gone off to America, fund-raising with NORAID, she had never known him either. Effectively orphaned, her aunt and uncle had brought her up. It had taught her to hate the sectarian politics, and to keep her head down.

‘A plague on both your houses,’ she muttered, glad it was behind her.

Leaving Belfast had been running away from all that. Having the degree, the prospects which London offered had been running towards something, something new. Now, was she running away again? Running from the government-contrived paranoia after nine-eleven? That was how she saw it. It could bring her out of London, here, to Exeter and Darshan, and a whole new set of challenges.

‘I was running
to
something then, when I came to London, to university,’ she told herself. ‘And now, I’m not just running away. That’s no good, you’re still on the same road if you run away. But running towards is different,’ she paused, thinking about herself, her life. ‘Running
to
something means you’ve got a new end in view. It’s not just fear, it’s hope too.’

Another bird landed on the window-ledge, chirped, got her attention and then stared at her, cocking his head first to one side then the other. It felt like encouragement.

And what about her and Darshan now? Their relationship had been good but she’d drifted away from him as she got more and more into journalism. They had begun to lose the art of conversation with each other. Isoldé had seen it and pulled up sticks before they lost the friendship as well as the relationship. Even though they had lost touch it seemed to have worked.
Meeting again, now, they were still good friends. He obviously respected her if he wanted her as a business partner. There had been no sign of making passes since she’d arrived, almost a brother/sister thing, yet not. That was good; there was no place within her for a relationship at the moment.

She had joined the Guardian Newspaper after getting her degree and, when the chance of an exchange with the New York Times came up, she’d applied for it but her friend Evelyn had got the job. She had taken on Evelyn’s flat, and her job at the paper, getting herself a good reputation as an investigative journalist, even been overseas a bit. There was a lot there to look forward to but …she didn’t like London now. It had changed. Security was so tight. Bomb squad sirens went off all the time and, every time, her skin crawled. She was terrified that, one day, Mickey or Jeremy or one of the others would turn up at a hot news scene and the bomb would go off, or the terrorist’s gun would find its target and she would lose a friend. Another friend. It had happened too often before. Even her best friend at school had been the target for a Republican bullet, accidental or so it was said. Whatever, she was just as dead either way. It was how her mother had gone, another vengeance killing. The Belfast memories gave her no feeling of security about the way the British government was handling this situation now.

‘Fools!’ she muttered. ‘Ass-licking to Bush!’

And now? Here was an offer to get her away from all that, into the other side of her life, the music part of herself. She would be running towards something. She chuckled, Darshan’s offer seemed to include both her skills, music and journalism. It was obvious he wanted her to work with Jamie at the radio station as well as himself. She thought about that, it was Darshan, he was an excellent businessman and not at all dog-in-the-manger-ish. He wanted everyone to do well. His philosophy was one of osmosis, if everyone did well then he would do well too. It seemed to work, for him anyway; maybe it would rub off onto
her.

She would be running towards something. It brought an unusual sense of freedom welling up from her belly. Yes, it would be good to do what you liked, what made your heart sing.

‘Do what makes your heart sing,’ Aunt Branwen had told her. ‘That’s what your mother always said and I should know, she said it to me often enough. “Don’t worry about anything else, Branwen,” she’d say, “just do what makes your heart sing, it’ll work out.” And then she’d be off again on one of her dancing gigs and nobody would see her for months. The only thing stopped her from dancing, eventually, was you, when you were coming. She did stop then, once she couldn’t fit into the costumes.’ Aunt Branwen’s smile would go all misty then and Isoldé would put her arms around her.

A lump caught in her throat. Mother had followed her maxim herself but it hadn’t stopped the terrorist bullet. She had loved life and been happy, right up to the end, so Aunt Branwen said. Isoldé wanted that, to do what made her heart sing. It seemed Darshan was offering her the opportunity to do just that.

She shook her head, shoving the memories back into the archives of her mind where they belonged. Re-locking the door of the flat, she went back down the stairs to the book shop.

‘Well …?’ Darshan quizzed.

‘Well …’ she answered back, smiling. ‘Good. Pretty. I like it. Especially the golden wood.’

‘OK.’ He got up. She saw the desk was tidy.

‘I’m off, now,’ he called to the middle-aged woman arranging titles in the window.

‘Right you are,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I’ll lock up, as usual.’

‘Thanks, Hilary. See you Monday.’

He took Isoldé’s arm and led her out into the Close, took her round the cathedral, showed her the great organ and introduced her to the precentor who happened across the Close just as they
were coming out.

Heading her back towards his car, ‘You want to see the sea?’ he asked.

Her eyebrows went up.

‘Exmouth.’ He grimaced. ‘Bit of an old folk’s home sort of place, but the beach is beautiful.’

And so it was. The day was bright but a chill wind blew. A couple of people were walking dogs. Isoldé looked out to sea and saw the horizon, the curve of the Earth, the edge of the world. It had been a long, long time since she’d seen it. It took her breath away.

They stood at the edge of the water.

‘I don’t have things like this in London,’ she told him. ‘Got to drive for a couple of hours to do this and, even then, it’s not the same.’ She was thinking of Brighton, Hastings or Winchelsea.

Darshan looked down at her. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it isn’t.’

They walked the length of the beach, then went back to the car. He drove back up the river to Topsham, Exeter’s ancient, historic estuary town. She loved the narrow, twisting streets that followed the old medieval tumbled shapes of the buildings in Fore Street.