Away From It All (15 page)

Ideally she'd be burned high on a blazing driftwood pyre at sunset on Tremorwell's beach and the entire village would turn out for a good send-off party with mead and marijuana all round, but this was a more legally cowed age than in her youth and she'd have to make do with the crematorium over at Truro. How many people would come, she wondered. Would her obituary be gratifyingly prominent in the newspapers? She had composed four versions (one for each of the broadsheets) and she kept them updated when there was anything significant to add. These days there rarely was, but with her biography and Patrice's programme, she – or Aidan, for surely this could be delegated to him – should be able to add a few more relevant lines.

Jocelyn clutched the side of the bed as she bent to draw a circle on the floor with blue chalk. She stretched her arm out as far as she could and hoped it
wouldn't be a problem that some of the circle extended under the bed. Her joints and muscles still felt lithe and pliable, thanks to years of daily yoga, but her balance was no longer to be trusted and she was conscious that her frame was weak and her breath was short. She felt her bones being dried out and becoming brittle, like old wood that's been too long in the wind and sun. When she looked down at the floor, things took a while to focus, as if her eyesight was having trouble keeping up to speed with her head. It was like being drunk. In fact that was exactly what it was like, she thought as she dusted the blue chalk from her fingertips, it was the same as being mildly and unpleasantly drunk but with no chance of recovery, and none of the lovely anything-possible recklessness about it. She would happily endure the worst-ever hangover just to get her old strong sense of self back again.

Perhaps this would do it. This charm to nourish the wits and renew the powers was well worth a shot. Jocelyn put a small dish containing sprigs of lavender soaked in oil in the centre of her blue circle. Alongside she placed stalks of blue vervain collected that morning from the herb garden outside the kitchen, and a long length of black silk cord that had once been threaded through the hood of Arthur's black velvet cloak. Then she stepped into the circle, sat cross-legged on the floor and with the chalk wrote around the circle's circumference while murmuring the words:

Verbena hastata, Quattuor elementa, Quattuor loco, Hasta verbena, Viam monstra
.

She tied the vervain stalks together, using the cord, and dipped the ends into the oil. With this wand she retraced the chalk circle. From downstairs she could hear people arriving, people talking in loud urban
voices. Patrice? Already? She tried hard not to be distracted as she gently covered the oiled, inscribed floor with the rug again. No-one must know what she'd done. If they found the circle, Mo and Alice knew enough of spellcraft to recognize from this that she'd felt vulnerable, had needed help from the powers to top up her vital wisdom. Slowly and with great care, clutching the door frame tight as she stepped onto a firm wooden chair, she climbed up and hung the vervain wand high above her door, on the inside where no-one could see it to speculate on what it meant. It was a shame, she thought, as she stepped back down to the floor, that Alice hadn't passed a working knowledge of these natural arts on to Grace. The girl should have spent more time at Penmorrow. She should have been educated in more useful skills than any so-called education system could give her. At least, she hoped they were useful: she would see over the next weeks if her health and energy were restored.

‘Aren't you pleased to see me?' Noel was saying it in that teasing way that was confident of getting an exuberant ‘Of course, darling!' by way of a reply. He was unpacking his bag and trying to find space for shirts in the tiny wardrobe in the Gosling bedroom. Alice was slamming about with the chest of drawers, moving her clothes around so he'd have room for his. He seemed to have brought quite a lot, though whether that was because he'd moved in for the summer's duration or because in the west side of England you could need to cater for at least three seasons'-worth of weather per weekend, she couldn't work out. She didn't want to ask him. She was already ashamedly conscious that her fury with the boys had made her
grumpy and unwelcoming – she'd barely said hallo to the over-jolly, large-scale young woman in the short slinky dress and strappy high shoes who'd arrived with Noel. If she now asked, ‘How long are you staying?' in her current mood, he could only interpret it as, ‘How soon are you going?'

The drawers in the chest had swollen from years of damp air and were sticking. Noel thought privately that Alice was being unnecessarily violent with them – surely she only needed to manipulate them gently to get them to budge. Shoving hard wasn't the way to results.

‘Here, let me,' he said, taking hold of her hands and moving her aside. She snatched her arms away from him.

‘Noel, I can do this. I'm quite capable.'

He backed off, hands raised. ‘OK, OK, look, I know. And I know you hate surprises so would you rather I just went back to London? Only it was a bit of a slow service today and if you don't mind I'd rather get a night's sleep before I get back on the train again.'

Alice sat down heavily on the bed and ran her hands through her hair, pushing it back off her face. Her nose and the skin above her cheekbones were a livid sun-scorched pink and her hair was overbleached and looked unusually coarse. This wasn't, Noel noted, the usual sleek London Alice. Her skin was slick with the heat. She smelled of seashore and had damp sand on her toes and the absence of her normal sheeny, clean ‘finish' was affecting him in the same rather smutty loin-stirring way that the girl on the train (Kathy? Katie?) did. In fact, if Alice hadn't been in such a spiky mood he'd have had a go at a fast and furious roll-around on the bed. Given the ‘by
appointment' nature of their sex life, that would be taking her by surprise in two senses.

‘You've caught the sun,' he commented, reaching out a finger to stroke the tip of her nose. She pulled her head back, but calmly now, without anger. And at last she smiled, showing a pale fan of lines at the outer edges of her eyes.

‘I know. It takes seconds. Factor fifteen moisturizer just can't cope.' She was relaxing at last. ‘Look Noel . . .' she began, standing up and going to the window.

‘What's wrong? Is it Jocelyn? Is she being difficult?' When wasn't she, he wondered silently.

‘No, well, partly. Sorry, I'm just a bit stressed. You won't believe what the boys did today on the beach. Theo as well, I'm afraid. You'll have to talk to him.'

But she could tell, as soon as she'd related the day's events, that he wouldn't. She could see his mouth twitching at the corners in a hopeless attempt to make sure she didn't catch him laughing. He was more likely to clasp Theo to him in ‘that's ma boy' style. What was so funny about killing small wild creatures? Was this a man-thing? A hunting-instinct thing? Or did it come under Applied Science? She'd never, she realized, understand the male psyche.

Supper was a simple chicken-leg and lamb-chop barbecue out on the side terrace, just off the kitchen. Alice had marinaded the meat in oil, lemon and herbs but as she carried the big wooden bowl containing a rocket and Parmesan salad out to the old sun-bleached table she wondered if Noel's train companion, Australian Katie (or ‘Kay-dee?' as she'd uttered it in an Antipodean upward lilt) would think their English cook-out efforts paltry compared with the barbies
of her home nation. Katie was a strong-looking girl with chunkily muscled arms that made her spaghetti-strapped, flounce-hemmed little cotton dress seem oddly incongruous. In spite of teetering around on pink jewelled mules that a hundred yards of Cornish cliff-path walking would completely demolish, she looked like someone who could single-handedly spear a speeding kangaroo, skin it and have the thing turning on an outback spit with no trouble at all. Alice imagined her perched on a fallen tree trunk under the vast Queensland sky, perfecting a French manicure while the beast sizzled over the flame. Alice laid out the cutlery and watched Katie opening a bottle of wine, hauling out the cork with no more effort than if she was pulling a thread from a needle. Noel was also watching her a lot, Alice noticed. He was hanging around, getting in Mo's way, poking at the barbecue's flames and pretending to be useful, scraping bits of ancient rust from the old Weber's frame while Mo flicked him impatiently away with a spatula as she turned the meat.

Patrice was going to be late, by twenty-four hours. Katie explained that she'd been sent on ahead to check out the venue, as she put it, and report back about what they'd need for the shoot.

‘Just lights and stuff?' she told them all as they sat at the wooden garden table where Theo was obsessively chipping off bits of lichen and piling it into a row of little heaps, exactly parallel to his knife. ‘I mean it's whether he'll need his full rig or just the essentials.' She grinned around at them all, assuming they'd have some idea what she was talking about. Joss nodded solemnly as if she did. It was some years since she'd been in the media spotlight and the last occasion had involved a truckload of technicians, a small van
dedicated entirely to sound production and most of the village finding an urgent reason why they needed to pop into Penmorrow for a good gawp.

‘Nah, it's not like that now. Then it was union rules, you had to have a stack of folks for every little job. All that's gone,' Katie said, dismissing Harry's anxious murmur about parking arrangements and a high-season village shortage of B. & B. accomodation. ‘Be just me and Patrice I guess, oh and the camera guy.'

‘No make-up artist? No stylist?' Grace looked disappointed. She knew about this: these were jobs that some of her friends' parents did – including Sophy's supremely glamorous mum who, Alice recalled, had sported neon-pink Prada trainers in the mothers' race back in Grace's prep-school days.

‘No sorry guys, it's a budget-aware era, this.'

Alice watched Noel watching Katie pick up a chop bone and gnaw at it, head slightly on one side like a cat chewing a mouse. She was surprised she felt so detached about seeing him so obviously attracted. Somehow, confusingly, she felt she'd mind more if Katie was getting the same attention from Aidan. Aidan, on the other hand, wasn't showing any interest in the girl at all. He was further along the table and had bravely placed himself between Chas and Sam, possibly intending to keep them from getting up to any mealtime mischief. Alice felt grateful, recognizing that it was Jocelyn he was concerned for. If these two juvenile demons (plus of course Theo, who was old enough to know far better) were tempted to try to add to their murderous tally here on the premises, Joss would not be at all amused. Or at least Alice assumed she wouldn't be – as always you could never tell with Jocelyn. She could go either way – compliment the boys on a cleverly learnt survival skill or be as angry
as a transatlantic sailor whose crew has proudly shot an albatross.

‘So you Brits haven't caught up with proper barbies?' Katie asked Mo, who was handing round a bowl of fragrant lemon rice. They all turned to look at the rusty, crusty old Weber that had a broom handle where the third of its leg tripod should be, and which leaked copious thick smoke from beneath its warped lid.

‘It does for us,' Mo said frostily. ‘It's not as if we use it very often.'

Katie laughed. ‘Yeah I can see that!' Jocelyn raised her eyebrows, alert to the girl's unrestrained lack of tact.

Alice thought again of the image of Katie beside a roaring pit of fire with her kill suspended over it.

‘We all have huge gas-powered things, with built-in spits and separately controlled grill areas. Nice to see a more primitive spirit lives on in this crazy old place though.' She gave a small trill of laughter and then added, ‘God, listen to me. The stuff I come out with! Take no notice folks, I've got no mental editing facility. I just come out with everything I'm thinking!'

‘Nothing wrong with that, my dear.' Joss reached across and took hold of Katie's wrist. ‘I'm just the same. You and I will get on terrifically.'

Katie, her attention now on a meaty chicken thigh, did not notice the sharp glint in Jocelyn's eye. But Alice did and recognized that her mother had said exactly the opposite of what she truly meant.

Grace walked down the hill to the beach by herself after supper. She'd asked Theo to come with her: they often went down to the shore together in the early evenings to skim stones into the flat sea and then have
a drink (Coke for her, illicit Stella for him) on the sea wall across the road from the pub. Tonight she'd particularly wanted to get him back to herself again, away from Chas and Sam. He wasn't really like them, they were too young and wild and silly for him, but, having heard a programme in her mum's car about alpha males and bonding rituals, she could understand why he wanted them to let him join in with the stupid things they did. She realized he'd keep doing stupid stuff till he was better at something than them, then he'd have proved himself to be top dog and stop. Tonight, Theo had said he thought he should hang out with his dad, seeing as he'd come all that way to surprise them. Grace's personal opinion on this was that she didn't see why Noel should expect them all to stop doing things they usually did just to enjoy his sainted presence.

Grace had Jocelyn's binoculars slung round her neck and she was heading for the lower slopes of the far cliff to see if she could spot the rabbit that she'd set free. It shouldn't be difficult, the creature was big and white and should be pretty easy to pick out grazing in the twilight. Her cat Monty trotted along beside her, his head pert and his ears flickering constantly at the faintest rustling sounds in the undergrowth. Where the path met the village road he'd stop, miaow after her for a few worried moments, then head back for Gosling and his own hunting ground.