All Things Undying (2 page)

Carrying our neatly wrapped purchases we moseyed along Foss Street to the Kitchen Shop where I browsed for gadgets I couldn't live without. Herb scissors! Milk frother! Lemon-saver! A canned tuna fish drainer! Who knew? ‘I'll worry about how to pack them later,' I told Alison. ‘Another thing charity shops are good for. Second-hand luggage at rock-bottom prices.'

At Simon Drew's gallery Alison and I were greeted by the black-hatted, white-bearded artist himself, resplendent in a pair of khaki shorts, and wearing a red and gold vest – what the Brits would call a waistcoat – over a turquoise shirt. A neon yellow bow tie completed the ensemble. Through spectacles that rose like bat wings over his eyes, Drew twinkled like Santa Claus as he introduced us to Rabbit, the black and white sheepdog eyeing us lazily from a prone position under a display case.

Alison stooped to give Rabbit a good scratch behind the ears, then checked her watch. ‘Crikey! Where did the time go? My daughter's got a bridge game, and I agreed to watch the kids. If I don't hustle, I'll be late.' She kissed the air next to my cheek, promised to call me around teatime the following day, and vanished through the door.

From the great man himself, I bought two ‘Cat-a-Tonic' coasters, a ‘Prawn to be Wild' tea towel, half a dozen greeting cards, and a pack of playing cards that featured some of Drew's most popular drawings. After admiring the ceramics on display in all three of the gallery rooms, I thanked the artist, bid him a cheerful goodbye, and wandered further along Foss Street to the Dartmouth Canvas Factory. I was staring into the window admiring a cleverly designed six-pocket canvas beer bucket that I thought would make a great birthday gift for Paul, when I sensed someone standing close behind me. Without turning around, I refocused my eyes, and peered at the reflection in the window.

‘Excuse me?' the reflection said.

I turned, expecting to have a hand thrust in my face, wrapped around a charity can decorated with dogs, cats, horses, foxes, maybe even anchors. But instead of begging for donations to the animal rescue league or some aged sailors' home, the owner of the reflection said, ‘You don't know me, but my name is Susan Parker. I'm a medium and clairvoyant.'

One might expect such a conversation-stopper out of the mouth of some fresh-faced, gauzy-skirted New Age flower child wearing her hair in dreads, but with the exception of a single purple lock that quivered gently over her left eyebrow as she talked, Susan Parker, Medium and Clairvoyant, looked perfectly normal to me. She wore an embroidered jacket over a crisp white blouse tucked into the waistband of slim black slacks, and a pair of fashionable, sling-back, low-heeled sandals. ‘I don't know whether you believe in mediums or not, but when I saw you standing there just now, I just had to speak to you. Do you have a minute?'

‘Do you always stop people on the street like this?' I asked.

She answered me with a grin, not at all spoiled by a slight gap between her two front teeth. ‘It's what I do.'

I had plenty of experience with mediums like Susan Parker. When my grandson was kidnapped, psychics crawled out of the woodwork like termites fleeing a burning building. It would be interesting to see where this was going. Since I didn't have anything in particular that I needed to be doing, I introduced myself and said, ‘I guess I can spare a minute. Maybe even two.'

‘It's just that there's an aura around you,' Susan began. ‘I see a female figure. A sister. No, wait a minute . . .' Her eyes darted away, focusing on a spot somewhere beyond my right shoulder. She shook her head. ‘No, not a sister. A mother.'

Everybody's got a mother
. So far, I was unimpressed.

‘She passed away, didn't she?'

Bullseye
. Yet that, too, could have been a lucky guess. In spite of my new youthful do, I was no spring chicken. ‘Yes,' I said, struggling to keep my face blank.

Susan raised a hand, palm out, and cocked her head as if she were actually listening to someone. ‘Your mother's apologizing. She says she's sorry for not being around when you needed her.'

I nodded dumbly. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes.

Once again the medium glanced away. Listened. Nodded. I followed her gaze, by now so unnerved that I half expected to see my mother posing in the shop window wearing one of their handmade fishermen's jackets. I shook off the feeling. It was an act, had to be, but a good one. And the envelope goes to . . . Susan Parker, Best Performance by a Medium Conversing with the Dead.

‘Does the name George mean anything to you?'

My father's name is George!
But before I could recover my breath and answer in the affirmative, Susan squinted through the shop door, as if having a conversation with someone standing just inside. ‘Thank you!' she chirped, then turned back to me. ‘Not George. Georgina.'

I stumbled back against the window glass, grabbing the sill for support. Georgina was my baby sister back in Baltimore. How could a total stranger an ocean away in England know about Georgina?

‘My sister,' I stammered, instantly buying into this woman's act one hundred and one per cent. ‘Georgina is my sister. Is she all right?'

Susan touched my arm, squeezed it gently. ‘I'm sorry, I didn't mean to alarm you. But your mother is here with me, and she has a message for your sister. She's saying, “Tell Georgina it's not her fault.” Does that mean anything to you?'

I nodded, too stunned to speak. Oh, it meant something all right.

Suddenly Susan winced. She inhaled sharply, pressed one hand tightly against her chest, then let her breath out slowly. ‘I'm feeling pressure. Here. In the chest area. Did your mother die of a heart condition?'

Again, I nodded. This was getting too weird for words. If Susan Parker wasn't talking to my mother, she had to be reading my mind.

‘I'm feeling cold,' Susan continued. Both hands were at her waist now, thumbs forward, fingers flexing, working her lower back. ‘I feel like I'm lying on something cold. And hard.' Her eyes, crystalline blue, widened. ‘Why do I keep seeing a refrigerator?'

‘Jesus!' I blurted. I couldn't help it. My mother had died in a Baltimore hospital, but the heart attack that killed her had happened in my kitchen, during a knock-down, drag-out screaming match with my sister Georgina. When I could breathe again, I said, ‘You're freaking me out.'

‘It's OK to freak out.' Susan smiled. ‘Do you want me to go on?'

I clutched the shopping bag from Simon Drew to my chest, wrinkling the heck out of the caricature of Rabbit printed on its side, and considered Susan's question for maybe two and a half seconds. ‘Yes,' I said, blinking back tears.

‘Your mother's saying she's fine, she's not in pain anymore . . .' Susan paused for a moment, just long enough that I began to worry. ‘There must be another sister.'

Oh. My. God. Susan Parker knew about Ruth, too. I'd walked out of the fanciful world of Simon Drew and straight into the Twilight Zone. ‘Uh huh,' I croaked, trying to swallow the lump that was suddenly taking up too much space in my throat.

Susan laid a gentle hand on my arm. ‘Your mother wants you and your sisters to know that she loves you very much.'

‘Uh huh,' I sniffed.

‘Do you need a tissue?'

‘Thanks.' While I wiped my eyes and blew my nose with the tissue thoughtfully produced from the depths of Susan's leather handbag, I tried to make sense out of what had just happened.

‘Are you OK?' she asked.

‘How . . .?' I began.

Susan shrugged. ‘I don't know,' she said. ‘I honestly don't know. It just happens.'

As if to punctuate her comment, the bells of St Saviour's Church began to chime the hour. Susan jumped as if she'd been shot. ‘Sorry, I've got an appointment. Have to run. Are you going to be all right?'

‘I think so,' I said, tucking the soggy tissue into my shopping bag. ‘It's just a lot to take in all at once.'

‘It was lovely to meet you,' Susan said, extending her hand, smiling. ‘And your mother!'

Rabbit appeared just then, checking out the shoppers, no doubt, snuffling noisily around my ankles as if I'd recently misted them with Eau de Boeuf. I bent to give the dog a pat. By the time I'd ordered Rabbit not to be such a beggar and sent him back to his owner, the embroidered sunflower on the back of Susan Parker's jacket was disappearing around the corner of Union Street.

‘Wait a minute! There's something I want to ask you!' Gathering my wits about me once more, I set off at a trot in the direction of Market Square searching for Susan, but she had vanished into the crowds that clustered around the market stalls selling everything from fresh raspberries to ‘designer' handbags.

Still in a fog, I made my way to the market tea room where I bought a cup of cappuccino, sat down at a table by myself and sipped it very, very slowly, feeling sorry for myself.

I was sprinkling a second packet of demerara sugar over the foam when it occurred to me. Susan Parker sounded exactly like Sue Scott playing the Lutheran Lunch Lady on
Prairie Home Companion.
She was an American.

TWO

I
honestly don't remember how I got back to our B&B on Horn Hill, but I must have made the right turn on to Anzac Street, skirted St Saviour's Church, and passed right by the Singing Kettle without even thinking about stopping for tea, which only goes to show how preoccupied I was because a cream tea at the Singing Kettle is a near religious experience, even if you've just finished a cappuccino.

Somehow, I made my way into Higher Street and turned right for the long climb up Horn Hill, one of the many stepped thoroughfares for which Dartmouth is famous. Horn Hill House was near the top, on the left, through a gate and up five additional steps along a narrow alleyway that opened into a well-tended garden.

When I snapped out of my daze, I found myself standing on the doorstep of Horn Hill House, fumbling in my handbag for the old-fashioned key with its unusual Buddha-shaped fob. Unlocking the door required two hands, so I tucked my packages under my arm, slotted the key into the lock, and turned both the key and the doorknob at the same time.

The door swung open on noisy hinges, and I stumbled into the tiny vestibule. I'd taken two steps in the direction of the narrow, twisting staircase that led to our room on the floor above when a door opened to my right. ‘Hannah?'

It was Janet Brelsford, our proprietress, looking super smart in a fuchsia scoop-neck T-shirt tucked into fashionably faded jeans with a razor-sharp crease.

‘Sorry, Janet. I didn't mean to disturb you.' I jingled the key. ‘I'll get the hang of the door eventually!'

Janet laughed. ‘I have no doubt of that. Can you come in for a moment? I've got something to show you.'

Paul and I had been in Dartmouth only a few days, but Janet and I had already become friends. From the minute we stepped over the threshold of Horn Hill House, Janet Brelsford and her husband, Alan, had made us feel like family. Janet cooked for us like family, too, if your family includes a Paris-trained Cordon Bleu chef among its members. Alan, a Francophile himself, managed to complement every meal with a fine Savigny Les Beaune Cuvee, a Sauvignon de Saint Bris or some other nearly unpronounceable
vin extraordinaire
, produced with a flourish from the depths of a wine cellar he kept locked with a key the size of a handgun.

‘I hope you don't mind,' Janet continued, easing the door to their sitting room a bit wider, ‘but when I was changing the linen in your room just now, I noticed your knitting.'

I had been contemplating a hot bath – a long, brain-sorting think in the claw-foot tub tucked into an alcove of our comfortable en suite – but suddenly, talking about knitting seemed a pleasant distraction. I dropped the keys into my bag. ‘It's not a particularly ambitious project,' I told her. ‘Slip one, knit one, pass stitch over on the even rows. It's called a healing shawl. I knit them for cancer survivors. Almost as good as a hug.'

‘We make them here, too,' Janet said. ‘Comfort shawls we call them.' She waved a hand toward a flowered chintz-covered sofa. ‘Speaking of which, make yourself comfortable. I've just put the kettle on. Would you care to join me?'

After all the coffee I'd had at the market, my eyeballs were floating, but I found I was craving company, so I caved. ‘Tea would be perfect. Lady Gray, if you have it.'

Janet smiled. ‘My favorite, too. Just a tick!'

While Janet bustled around in the kitchen of the ground floor apartment she shared with her husband and two young daughters, I sank gratefully into the sofa, rested my head against the upholstery and stared at the coffered ceiling, embossed with curling vines. What had happened only minutes before already seemed like a dream. Still, it unnerved me. I should tell Paul, of course, but he'd groan, roll his eyes and make
Twilight Zone
noises. Ruth would be right on board, of course, but my older sister was back in Maryland, probably
feng shui-
ing the heck out of somebody's house. For a woman who believed that mirrors could repel evil spirits, talking to ghosts wasn't a huge leap.