Forever (21 page)

Gussie had been too tense with anticipation to notice anything at all about the petite, almost dainty figure in the rocking chair. And then Mae spoke her name and Leila Jefferson froze, ageing before them, her gaiety fleeing, her delight at Mae's visit a a thing of the past.

‘Gussie?' she asked, and her voice was little more than a whisper. ‘Gussie Lafayette?'

‘Yes, Gran. She's …'

Leila Jefferson's hands released Mae's. Her eyes moved beyond her granddaughter to where Gussie stood with Eden. Not for one second did her eyes rest on Eden.

‘So it happened,' she said, and Eden felt fear surge up and swamp her. ‘It happened as I knew it would.'

‘Gran …'

Slowly Leila Jefferson rose to her feet and faced Gussie.

‘The same hair, the same eyes, the same face …' Her words trailed away. She remained standing, one arm on the rocking chair for support, staring at Gussie.

Eden fought to control her fear. Perhaps Leila Jefferson
was
crazy. Too crazy to help them. Perhaps no one
could
help them.

‘Poor Chantel, thinking she could escape so easily.' The old lady's hand reached out and took Gussie's and Gussie began to cry. Leila Jefferson wrapped her arms around her, hushing her as if she were a child.

‘What vengeance is Loa exacting, child?'

Mae was confused. ‘I don't know what you mean, Gran. It's not a god. It's not even voodoo. Not really. At least …' she faltered. ‘… it didn't seem like voodoo at the time. It was a joke: a silly, stupid joke.'

Leila Jefferson had returned to her chair, and Gussie knelt at her side, their hands still clasped.

‘Nothing to do with Loa can be taken lightly. It may have seemed like a joke, Mae, but Loa has waited a long time for revenge.'

Mae shook her head desperately. Was her Gran going to fail them after all? Rambling on about her voodoo god without even listening to the story of Midsummer's Eve and without even knowing about Beau Clay?

‘I don't know what you're talking about, Gran. We don't know anyone called Loa. It's Gussie who is in trouble. Gussie who needs help.'

Leila Jefferson sighed and it was the deep, tearing sigh of old age and final capitulation.

‘Whatever trouble Gussie Lafayette is in, is because of Loa. He's waited half a century for revenge and I've lived half a century in fear of it.' She looked down at Gussie. ‘Tell me, child. What did you do to open the doors to the spirits?'

Eden stood so still she could hear her own heartbeat above the sound of the encircling insects. Mae sat silently, wiping the tears from her cheeks. Louella came to the door with a tray of iced drinks and halted, listening, her eyes full of pain.

‘It was Midsummer's Eve a year ago,' Gussie said with strange calm as she felt the strength of Leila Jefferson's handhold. ‘Mae said she'd heard you speak of a Midsummer's Eve ceremony where you could make the boy you loved, love you.'

Imperceptibly Leila Jefferson's dark head nodded.

‘I … wanted someone very badly. More than anything.' She paused. Where was he now? Surely he knew what she was doing? That she was betraying him? Her throat was dry. The words came with difficulty.

‘I wrote his name backwards on paper and at midnight, looking into the mirror, I ate it and I wished and wished with all my might, mind and strength that I might have him. That he would love me as I loved him.' The last word was barely audible. ‘Forever.'

Leila's eyes held hers. It was as if Mae and Eden were not present. ‘Who's name did you write, child?'

The answer came in a long, drawn-out breath from the centre of her being. ‘Beauregard Clay.'

No one moved or spoke. Trailing greenery around them seemed to draw nearer, suffocating them in its fronds and tendrils.

At last, after a long time, Mae said quietly, ‘He died, Gran. Minutes after midnight on Midsummer's Eve, he died driving his car at breakneck speed to Gussie's home.'

‘And his body and spirit no longer inhabit his tomb.' It was Leila Jefferson's voice, and it was not a question. Just a statement of fact.

‘He's coming for me,' Gussie said simply. ‘He wants me to join him: to honour the vow I made. To be his forever and forever … Beyond the grave.'

In the silence that followed a brown pelican flapped its wings and emerged from beneath the surrounding density of oaks and water, a struggling fish trapped in its beak. Something unseen scurried across the floor behind them and disappeared. A spider skimmed down a length of thread and hung, blue-black, in the air above them.

It was as if Leila Jefferson already knew. None of the arguments Eden had mentally prepared had to be put forward.

‘I stayed at St Michel with Gussie,' Eden said, speaking for the first time. ‘We'd had a tiring day and fell asleep quickly. When we woke …' She hesitated and looked across at Gussie's marble-white face. ‘When we woke Gussie was wearing her wedding gown and was standing in the middle of the room. There was a lamp lit at the window and the door was open.' She licked dry lips. ‘There were footsteps on the gravel outside. Both Mae and I heard them. Gussie was radiant. She really did look like a bride. It was as if she were lit by an inner flame. The knocker fell and we could see him clearly, silhouetted in a glass panel. Gussie began to run down the stairs and Mae began to scream and the knocker slammed again and again …' Eden broke off, trembling convulsively.

‘What did you do?' Leila Jefferson asked steadily.

Eden clenched her hands together to still them. ‘I wrenched a mirror off the wall and threw it down between Gussie and the door.'

‘And then?'

Eden shook her head purposefully. ‘I don't know. I didn't see him go. I thought I'd killed Gussie. There was glass and wood everywhere and Gussie was unconscious. When she came round she didn't know what had happened. Not at first. When she remembered she was terrified. She said that Beau would not rest until she joined him. That there was no way she could escape him.'

There was infinite sadness in Leila Jefferson's voice. ‘A harmless prank. And because of Chantel … this. Because of me.'

The three girls stared at her, not understanding.

For a few seconds she was lost in a reverie they could not enter. And then she visibly shook herself and turned to the still figure in the doorway.

‘I think we'll be having those drinks now, Louella, if you please.'

Only when the drinks had revived them and Louella had replenished their glasses did anyone speak, Gussie the first, venturing to ask what she had wanted to know all her life.

‘My grandmother, Chantel, what was she like? Why should any of this be her fault. Or yours?'

Leila's eyes were suspiciously bright as she looked down at the living likeness kneeling beside her chair.

‘Chantel Gallière was the prettiest, kindest and liveliest girl in New Orleans. We were friends from our cradles. We played together; laughed together; dreamed dreams together.'

Tears sparkled on her lashes.

‘And then one night I led her to her death.' She no longer saw the three girls before her. She was back again in the hot, sultry night of her youth. Hearing Chantel plead to turn back; to go home. Once again deep in the darkened forest, water gleaming malevolently between the cypress-shrouded trees, their way made barely passable by the sluggishly flowing bayous.

‘Then it was an accident? She didn't drown herself?' Gussie asked feveredly.

For a second she wondered if Leila Jefferson had heard her, and then Leila said, with a strange catch to her voice, ‘No, child. It was no accident. She walked out of her home and into the forest. And when she found water deep enough she walked out into it and spread herself face down upon it and died.'

‘But why?' Gussie's eyes were huge, anguished.

‘Because she had taken part in a voodoo ritual. She was a bride of the god Loa. As I was. And she couldn't live with that burden. She thought it a burden that could be laid down but I knew differently. To lay it down is to invite revenge. Loa could not strike through her child, a son. He has had to wait as long as I have had to wait. He has had to wait for you. A daughter of Chantel's blood.'

Gussie stared at her, round-eyed. ‘But my grandmother wouldn't… Not voodoo …'

Leila's eyes held pain so deep that Eden felt her spine tingle. ‘When I was a girl, Louella was my maid. A
voodienne
. One night we followed her when she left my father's house. Chantel was frightened of the dark and asked me to go back … To return home. But I said “no”. If we turned back we would get lost in the swamp. That we had to go on.' Her body sank against the cushions of her chair, frail and defeated. ‘Louella was going to a ceremony. A ceremony to give power over a dead spirit. And we were found. I thought that we were going to be killed. Then Louella intervened and pleaded that we be made brides of Loa, a voodoo god. As such we would never be able to tell what we had seen or participated in, for to do so would be to call down Loa's wrath. I didn't believe in voodoo then. I thought it a childish, ridiculous ceremony. I was to learn later of my ignorance and stupidity. Chantel was never so foolish. She realized the horror she had committed herself to. And she escaped by death.'

‘Leaving me to face Loa's revenge?' The breath in Gussie's chest was so tight she could scarcely utter the words.

‘I'm afraid so, child. Sooner or later Loa would have destroyed your life in revenge for the bride who broke her vow. Your silly, harmless little Midsummer's Eve ceremony was ideally suited for the purpose. Your death for Chantel's.'

Gussie's voice was taut with pain. ‘And Beau? Is he bound to Loa too?'

Leila Jefferson shook her head. ‘No, child. Beauregard Clay is a spirit in torment. Bound not to Loa but to you through the ceremony you enacted. The ceremony that Loa lent power to for his own ends. The ceremony that your own, obsessive love made possible.'

‘How do we free them?' It was Eden's voice, seeming to Gussie to come from light years away. ‘How do we free Gussie from Loa's power? How do we free Beau so that he may sleep in peace?'

Leila Jefferson looked down at Gussie's upturned face. ‘Do you believe with all your soul that you
can
free yourself from the powers of darkness?'

‘Yes.' The answer came unhesitatingly, strong and firm.

‘Do you believe that a reversal of the ceremony you enacted will free Beau from you?'

‘Yes.'

Gussie's eyes held Leila's unflinchingly.

A tremor ran through Leila's body and was stilled.

‘Good.'

‘But what of Loa?' Eden said hesitantly. ‘How will he be appeased?'

‘He will be appeased, child. There is not one Loa, but numberless Loas. So I have learned in the years since Chantel's death. And I have learned how such supernatural forces can be placated. It needs voodoo to combat voodoo.'

When she had told them what they must do, she smiled suddenly at them: a devastatingly pretty smile for such an aged face. ‘This is why I have lived as I have. Waiting for the day when my knowledge can atone for Chantel's death and free her descendants from the curse my foolishness brought upon them.'

‘But Gran.…' Mae began to protest.

‘No more questions, Mae. What I do, I do alone. What you do, you must do together.'

A flush of rose tinged the sky. Eden held out her hand and grasped Leila's. ‘We must be going. There isn't much time. We'll come back afterwards to thank you properly.'

The smile on Leila's face held a touch of sadness. She would not be there when they returned. Her life, lived solely for the day that was now coming to a close, was nearly over. She would not live to see another sunrise. Not after the ceremony she would enact that night.

‘Goodbye, Mrs Jefferson,' Gussie said, her confidence returned. ‘Thank you for telling me all about my grandmother and of how pretty and kind she was. Thank you for telling me what to do. Thank you for doing whatever it is you have to do.' She bent forward to kiss Leila on the cheek. ‘I shall never forget. Never.'

Mae hugged her grandmother goodbye and then they were gone, running through the jungle of tropical vegetation to the rutted track and their car.

The gold hoops in Louella's ears glinted in the late afternoon sun.

‘I reckon our waiting time is over, Miss Leila,' she said as the car bucketed into the thick forest of oak and cypress.

‘Yes,' Leila said, feeling the silence and dusk settle around her. ‘The waiting is finally over.'

‘Will it work?' Mae asked tentatively as the wilderness of knotted figs and knife-blade banana and wild roses was left behind and they headed towards New Orleans.

‘For Christ's sake!' Eden said, bucking down the seldom-used track to the highway. ‘It
has
to work.'

She flicked an anxious look across at Gussie. The last thing she wanted was for doubt to enter Gussie's mind. If it did, the ceremony that was to be enacted would be worthless. Only overwhelming belief would lend it power.

‘It will work,' Gussie said tersely, her face harrowed at the thought of the ordeal ahead. ‘Quickly, Eden. It's getting dark. I don't want to be away from St Michel in the dark.'

Mae's bottom lip trembled. She could not endure another night like the previous one. ‘Can I go home now? I can stay with my mother this evening and …'

‘No!'
Eden's voice was explosive. ‘You were in this affair at the beginning, Mae. You're going to see it through.'

Mae choked back a sudden onrush of tears and leaned back in her seat, oblivious as they made the highway and Eden increased speed.

Gussie sank into silence as the late afternoon sun reddened with the first tints of dusk. Beau knew her mind; her very thoughts. He would do everything in his power to prevent her from severing the bond that held her to him. Always before, whenever she had thought of Bradley, or had contemplated leaving her self-imposed incarceration at St Michel, he had come to her in full force. Possessive and jealous; determined that she should belong to no one but him. What would he do now when he knew she was preparing to free herself forever? She felt sick with fear and apprehension. She must not think of him. She must not allow his voice to enter her mind. She must fight his presence with all her strength.