The Moon Spun Round (7 page)

This is an ancient moon. It once watched over the men who struck axes from rocks of flint, men who huddled in rough shelters, cowering from the prowlers of the night. This moon remembers the pathways once trodden by long-toothed tigers as they crossed this very land. Now it faces Sally’s window, as if it has singled her out for some purpose and knows she has answered its summons. Its power draws her, flows through her, a magnetic tide, subtle yet palpable,
the subliminal hum of a primeval generator. If she were to listen hard enough, long enough, it may have something to tell.

A movement catches the corner of her eye, snapping her out of the spell. Something stirs over to one side of her garden, a slight shifting of shadows. From the patch of trees between the neighbouring properties a small shape emerges and slinks across the lawn, black against black. Relief: it’s only Cat returning, that’s all, and Sally won’t be alone. But then another shape, this one larger and of human form, also emerges from the trees and follows Cat. They cross the grass, clearing the shadows, and move into the full glare of moonlight. The figure is so clear that Sally can see that, despite the trousers and the bulky jacket, it’s a woman. True, it’s tall and angular enough to be a man, yet it moves with such grace and lightness that there can be no mistake. As the figure turns her head, a cascade of dark hair flows around her shoulders.

The woman pauses for a moment, as if she senses she is being watched. She looks up, directly at the window, and Sally fears their eyes will meet and she will be discovered in the act of voyeurism. She lets the curtain fall part-way to conceal her presence, and has to remind herself that the garden is hers and that the woman is the intruder. Even so, she senses no harmful intent. After a moment the woman looks away, and the two prowlers continue their passage, rounding the corner of the house and vanishing from sight.

For a moment Sally can’t breathe, and when she does she can’t move. Common sense tells her to run to the front of the house and look from the landing window into the lane, mark the direction the woman has taken. Although where would she go? Left from her front gate leads to a ditch and some fields; if she turned right she would pass by Abbie’s house and join the main village street. There’s no sound of a car starting up, so she must be walking back towards the centre of the village. A late-departing visitor from last night’s gathering? No, that makes no sense. Why cut through Sally’s garden into a muddy lane when Abbie’s house corners the road? An intruder at the stables? The place is covered by security floodlights, and, besides, the horses would have kicked up bedlam. No, it was Sally’s garden she was visiting. And she didn’t look like a burglar, or at least what Sally thinks a burglar should look like. Although, now she remembers, the woman was carrying something. Something large and heavy that she held by a handle. What was it? A jar. One of those old-fashioned stone jars with a narrow neck. The sort your great-grandmother used for sloe gin, or mead.

There’s an abrupt sound from downstairs, the now familiar double click of the cat-flap. Cat has returned, leaving their night visitor to find her own way home. Sally breathes deeply. It’s safe to get back under the warmth of the quilt.
Soon she hears the soft pit-padding of paws on the stairs and waits for the thump of a small body landing on the end of the bed. The next time she opens her eyes, the room is grainy with the advancing dawn and a halo of sunlight filters through the muslin.

‘Well, are you going to lead the way?’

Cat sets off purposefully across the grass, heading towards the clump of trees. Of course Sally had explored the garden on the first day. She had discovered lawns that had been kept neat, but little in the way of flowers or flower beds, just a few bedraggled shrubs dotted about. And of course had she looked into the patch of trees that mark the boundary of her land, but the ground was slippery with mud and she gave it only a cursory glance. Then the drizzle that fell steadily throughout the rest of the week kept her indoors. November isn’t the best month to contemplate gardening and, after all, nothing was going to grow now, not even the grass. She felt glad to shelve the whole issue of horticulture until the spring and concentrate on getting the inside of the house sorted out.

Thankfully the rain had held off for last night’s fireworks and, looking back over the hedge on the opposite side of the lawn, she can see the remains of the huge bonfire, now a spent pyre of blackened staves and grey ash. The air is damp, a heavy dew bordering on mist, and hangs with the reek of sulphur, that familiar Guy Fawkes smell that announces the countdown to Christmas. A burnt-out rocket lies on the grass, and she cannot resist picking it up and touching the fragile paper tube. The blackened edges crumble in her fingers. Cat waits by the edge of the trees, sniffing a single blade of grass as if it were of great importance, then turns her head and waves her tail high to hurry Sally on.

‘All right, I’m coming.’

Yesterday she had visited Cambridge to indulge in some retail therapy. The bed linen she had brought with her looked out of place in the cottage, so she purchased new sheets and a coverlet, soft and frilly and embroidered with sprigs of thyme. Yes, it would look overly feminine, a woman’s bed—so what the hell, it
is
a woman’s bed. Then she came across a specialist confectionery that sold handmade Belgian chocolates. A perfect gift for her hostess; Abbie’s weakness is a sweet tooth, especially where chocolates are concerned. Sally had them make up a special selection, boxed and gift-wrapped. She carries it with her now. This is her first visit to the big house on the corner, but she has driven
past it several times, the high wall of ancient bricks with red slates and gabled windows beyond. And once, when walking to the village shop, she peered at the big brass knocker and the ornately carved door. It looked like it must have been the manor house or something important; ‘old money’, as her father would have said. She has decided to try the shortcut through the trees that Abbie told her about, but the grass is still very muddy and she’s glad she chose to wear something sensible on her feet.

What do you wear for Sunday lunch in the country? Abbie did say it was informal, but what does that mean? She had only ever seen Abbie in jodhpurs. Sally is used to dressing for the occasion. Sometimes, she thinks, what you wear
is
the occasion, all the rest just an excuse to parade a collection of designer labels. Life will be different here, she thinks. I will be different. All this week she has lived in denims and trainers, which she now abandons in favour of leather ankle boots and tailored slacks with a loose-fitting cashmere sweater. A reasonable compromise, she thought, when she assessed her image in the bedroom mirror. Then, on impulse, she added a pendant, some sort of semi-precious stone set in a silver crescent, round and smooth and veined with white strands like curds of milk. It had been a present from someone, she can’t even remember who, received with a flurry of thanks and instantly forgotten. It has lain in the bottom of her jewellery box until now, but for some reason she remembered it just as she was about to leave the house—something light to offset the purple of the wool, perhaps? She’s not conscious of its weight around her neck; nor is she aware, as she nears the patch of trees, that her fingers seek to touch the smooth roundness of the stone.

But she remembers the white light of last night’s moon.

Yes, this was the place where the woman had emerged from the shadows, carrying that stone jar. There’s a break in the trees and a clear track leads into the centre of the copse, arched over by branches. Now the sky is visible, steel grey, behind a mesh of sharp twigs, but the trees and bushes are densely woven, and in summer the place will be rich and dark with foliage. Underfoot it’s dank with rotting leaves, and there are still green patches between the trunks where swathes of ground-creeping ivy run regardless of the seasons. Cat dives off into the undergrowth on some mission of her own, and Sally, abandoned by her guide, can hear her rustling through the withered bracken. But it can only be a few steps through to the stable yard and the little trail is clear enough to follow.

Suddenly she stops.

Why is that? Why is there a path through here? Twenty years, Abbie said, since she had neighbours. Why would she come through here when there was
no one to visit? That woman last night, what was she doing? And how many other times had she been here? Sally holds her breath, listening to the silence, although of course there’s no silence: the distant hum of a passing car from the village road; a blackbird, one she has seen often in the garden, screeches an alarm call as Cat crashes through a mound of fallen leaves. And water, the gentle gurgling of water—yes, she was told there is a stream. The ground slopes down towards the centre of the grove, and she hangs on to branches and tufts of dry fern to prevent herself tumbling forwards. Ahead the ground suddenly drops completely, only a few inches, and below her feet a thin ribbon of light flickers between overhung grasses. To one side there’s a dip where she could step down to the edge, and an arrangement of large stones to make it easy to cross over the water, a sapling lending a helping hand on the other bank. But the trail doesn’t lead that way. Instead it breaks off to the left, pointing upstream to an outcrop of rocks.

She picks her way along to where the bank widens into an open space and the grass looks as if it has been flattened underfoot. A small glade filled with the music of water purling over stones.

Sally moves to where the stream emerges from between layers of rock. It spills into a pool that, in turn, narrows and twists before tumbling over a stony ridge to form the thread of bright water running to the crossing place. What is this? A natural spring? On my land? There must have been something in the plans, but she was aware of buying only a house. Now it hits her, the realization: she owns all of this, the stream, the earth, the trees. For the first time in her life, she owns a tree. Can one own such things? She is awed by the temerity of it.

Finding a safe place to leave Abbie’s chocolates, she leans over the edge of the pool, mindful of the mud, and sees the silhouette of her own head and shoulders reflected against the metal of the sky. The surface of the pool gleams, but where her shadow falls it’s dark and clear and she can see through to the bottom. Although the stream is shallow, the pool is much deeper, or so it seems, but this may be a trick of the light, an illusion of refraction. There are stones on the bed, and some form of long-leafed weed teased by the current into mares’ tails. And something else. Bits of rubbish? No, surely not. But there are things down there, and they’re not things formed by nature. Angular shapes, mud-caked and corroded. One piece, a curve of metal, appears to be a more recent addition. Indignant that someone may have violated her pool with their dross, she slips her arm from her sleeve, baring her shoulder, and plunges it deep into the water. A momentary gasp at the coldness, but she has the object and brings it to the surface.

She turns it in her fingers, puzzled. Rubbish? No, definitely not. A circle of red-burnished copper and new by the look of it, deeply carved with vines and grapes. A bracelet, obviously, and a thing of quality. Now why would anyone…? That woman last night…And then the coldness of her wet arm breaks through her thoughts and she shudders, dragging a handful of tissues from her pocket to scrub her skin dry and comfort it with the warmth of her sweater. But what to do with the bangle? A creeping sensation that she has intruded on something very private. Feeling almost embarrassed, she slips the ornament back into the pool and scrambles to her feet.

There’s an explosion of foliage beside her as Cat bursts from the bracken and crash-lands on the rocks. ‘OK, I’m coming right now.’ Sally rubs streaks of earth from her hands, brushes her clothes down and retrieves the box of chocolates. The stream proves easy enough to get over, and moments later she’s free of the trees and crossing the paddock behind the stable block.

Sally rounds the corner of the outbuildings and heads towards the main house and the family lunch, her head filled with thoughts of the pool and its treasure trove. As a consequence she nearly runs into a young man pushing a wheelbarrow. Both startled, they cover their embarrassment by laughing.

Sally speaks first. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Hello, you must be Daniel. God, you’re the image of your mother. But I bet everybody tells you that.’

‘And you must be Sally. We’re expecting you. Mum’s been talking about you all morning.’ He starts to offer his hand, then pulls it back abruptly. ‘On second thoughts, better not. Been mucking out.’ He nods at the wheelbarrow piled high with straw, wet and steaming from the stables. ‘Sorry about that. Hardly the way to greet a guest.’

‘No problem. One of the reasons I’m here is to meet the horses. Anyway, I’ll be living next door to them so I’d better get used to it.’ She’s conscious of her smile and realizes she’s almost flirting. But then, he is incredibly good-looking—blond hair, pale blue eyes. A second glance and she becomes aware that, even though he’s tall, he’s barely more than a boy and she tells herself to behave. Still, she has surprised herself. After Jonathan…Well, she thought all that had died with him. ‘I’d better go and find your mother.’

‘She’s in the kitchen with the girls. It’s that door there. Go straight in. I’ll see you later.’

She can hear horses puffing and stamping their feet in the building behind her. But Sally is eager to see Abbie and hurries across the yard, nearly skidding in damp sawdust, some of it dark and clumped with horsy stains. She carefully cleans her boots outside the kitchen door where there are metal scrapers set there for the purpose, and a bristly thing, a sort of inverted broomhead made to
look like a hedgehog. The kitchen is vast and smells of toast and freshly ironed linen. Ancient and modern combine, antique dressers and brushed-steel built-in ovens and microwave, amid the comfortable disorder of a family. Despite the grandiose exterior and the high plaster-moulded ceilings, this is a home as well as a house.