Resurrectionists

KIM

THE

For Elaine and Stella:

angels earthly and heavenly

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Christina Rossetti

The dead have exhausted their power of deceiving. Horace Walpole

Contents

Dedication

Epigraphs

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind…

The dead have exhausted…

The smell of decay and the cold…

On the first Thursday in November…

2

Maisie felt as though she had been traveling…

3

Though he was loath to admit it, Reverend Fowler …

4

Adrian was a good singer and he knew it…

5

Maisie found herself anxiously peering…

6

Tuesday at around two p.m. Maisie…

7

And so, little book, prepare to become…

8

Maisie placed the little book in her lap…

9

Though far from being a blissful New Bride…

10

Maisie sat back to contemplate what…

11

Damp hair trailing about her face, Maisie…

12

Maisie and Cathy sat in a cramped corner…

13

Charlotte lies next to me, bleeding…

14

Yes, it is true I have not written…

15

My husband is still ill, and I begin to despair…

16

Maisie put the diary carefully aside…

17

The train slid into King’s Cross station…

18

Maisie tried not to worry about wax dripping…

19

“Morning, Reverend. I’ve got that number…

20

With the fire at her back, with Tabby curled up…

21

Gloomy morning didn’t dawn at all.

22

What a relief not to have to think of spells…

23

Adrian put off calling Janet as long as he could. 24

When the bell began to toll Maisie realised…

25

Virgil is much improved. His colour…

26

Another long silence from me…

27

***** too cold to leave the house.

28

Maisie bit her lip and blinked back tears.

29

Dawn was still a half hour…

30

A bus was leaving for Whitby just as Maisie…

31

She couldn’t keep her hands off him.

32

The heat of the afternoon hit Adrian …

33

Because I cannot starve, because I have a child…

34

A week in relative Comfort has made me lazy…

35

I wonder, do houses have memories?

36

Maisie stopped reading and looked up.

37

Mila left in a flurry of apologies and promises…

38

The beach was dirty with sludgy…

39

Maisie dreaded leaving behind the warm…

40

She slept through Sunday and most of Monday. Acknowledgments

From the author

Credits

Copyright page

Front Cover

About PerfectBound

SEPTEMBER

The smell of decay and the cold caress of a shadow, and the old woman knew how this would end. After all, she had read the story. She had never been afraid of crossing over: death was life’s last great adventure, and at eighty-three years of age she’d be foolish to harbour fears still. But could she make the crossing if she died like this?

She gasped for air, her heart thudding in her chest. Bang, bang, bang. Her joints, worn and stiff with years, could not hold out for much longer. The ground was uneven and rough beneath her bare feet, her toes were frozen, her thick dress only dulled the edge of the biting autumn wind. The bells on the church were ringing Sunday night’s service out. If she left the world now, then nobody could stop him. Nobody would know.

“Please,” the old woman cried, panting, hands on her knees, running no more. Her back curved over, open to attack. “Please.” She didn’t know why she was saying please. Please meant nothing. Especially not to this kind of being. She tried to gather herself, but the agony of ripped flesh raced up her back in one hard, hot stroke. Dark arms enveloped her, choking her. Her blood felt hot as it ran over her legs. She did not struggle, using her energy instead to project herself out of her body as she had done so many times in her practice. Don’t feel the pain. Die quietly, peacefully. Don’t look at it. But curiosity was burning in her. The ache of ruptured skin pulled her back and kept her pinned inside. Stiff, hard fingers crushed into each arm, turning her around. She dropped her head, closed her eyes. Felt life ebbing from her.
Go across, Sybill
, she told herself.
Jump the
chasm. Don’t look at it. Don’t die in fear. Resist, resist.
Slowly she lifted her head, opening her eyes. Her scream could be heard as far away as Solgreve Abbey.

In a warm dark bedroom, oceans away, the old woman’s granddaughter awoke with a sense of dread, billowing nausea churning deep in her stomach. She barely made it to the bathroom in time. Fifteen minutes of violent retching mercifully blurred the memory of the dream. All she could recall later, in the solicitous light of dawn, was that she had touched a nightmare, and that the nightmare had somehow reached out to touch her in return.

On the first Thursday in November, Maisie Fielding watched as her boyfriend murdered a woman in a fit of jealous passion, but her mind was elsewhere. Verdi’s score rolled on around her, Desdemona – a chunky soprano at least fifteen years older than her leading man – died with all due drama, and the audience gradually fell in love with the handsome young tenor who had only been Otello’s understudy until three o’clock that afternoon. It was the biggest break of Adrian’s career, but Maisie was preoccupied with her lie.

And it was a big lie. It involved imaginary consultations with imaginary doctors, feigned tears and feigned winces of pain, and a reluctant acceptance of the fictional diagnosis – three months’ break from playing the cello, for fear of permanent injury. Her mother had pressed her perfectly formed pianist’s hand to her perfectly glossy black hair – still not a streak of grey – and moaned, yes,
moaned
, in distress.
Your
career, Maisie, your future.

But damn it, she had been in an arranged marriage with the cello since she was four. It was time for a trial separation.

She glanced over at her mother who sat next to her, eyes soft with tears of pride. She loved Adrian. Everybody loved Adrian, he was eminently lovable. It was entirely her mother’s own fault that she got lies instead of the truth. There was no question of Maisie approaching her and confessing that she needed a break from the orchestra, to try something different, to be someone different. Nobody ever argued with Janet Fielding, or at least, nobody ever won.

As if she knew her daughter was thinking of her, Janet reached out and touched Maisie’s right hand, the injured hand. Her caress was gentle, almost reverent. Maisie realised she would never know for sure if the touch was meant for her, or just for the body part. She turned her hand over and squeezed her mother’s in return. Everybody on stage was soon dead or lamenting a death, and the final curtain fell to rapturous applause.

“I think Adrian’s going to be a star,” Janet said, raising her voice over the din.

Maisie smiled. “He always has been. Now

everybody else will know.”

They met Adrian, wig-free and scrubbed of his make-up, one hour later at a cafe on Boundary Street. In the meantime, while they waited, Maisie had carefully steered conversation away from the lie, encouraging her mother instead to reminisce over a bottomless pot of Earl Grey tea. Past glory was always a favourite topic of conversation for Janet Fielding. When Adrian walked into the room, blond hair glinting like a halo, everyone – men and women –

looked up and appraised him. He had that kind of presence, and Maisie wondered for the zillionth time what he had ever seen in a neurotic, black-haired, black-eyed girl with bitten fingernails and too-straight eyebrows. She hoped it wasn’t just her pedigree –

Maisie’s mother had been a renowned concert pianist before her surprise pregnancy at forty-two. Her father was a conductor with an international reputation. He had rarely been at home through most of her childhood. Now nearly seventy and semi-retired, Roland Fielding was the one who had introduced Maisie to Adrian four years ago.

Janet took up nearly half in hour in euphoric praise of Adrian’s performance, and all the while he sat there beaming with the kind of self-pleasure which borders on vanity. But finally, as Maisie knew it would, the conversation turned elsewhere.

“I expect you haven’t heard Maisie’s bad news yet,” Janet said, her mouth turning down in faint disapproval.

“Maisie?” Adrian turned to her with steady grey eyes.

“Ah . . . yes. The final specialist’s report came back this afternoon. I have to take a break, at least three months.”

Adrian nodded his understanding. “I thought a break might be the best way to handle your condition.”

He knew the truth, of course. He knew that Maisie’s condition was not about ligaments or muscles or carpal tunnels. Instead, it was about a vague but allencompassing dissatisfaction with her life, a non-specific longing which started way down in her toes and tickled like spider’s feet in her solar plexus. Janet shook her head. “I’ve been playing piano for more than fifty years, and I’ve never had to take a break.”

“Not everybody is built the same way,” Adrian replied gently.

“What will you do with your time, Maisie?” her mother asked. “Adrian will be touring over Christmas, and at summer school for most of January. I hope you aren’t going to mope about at home while I’m trying to teach.”

Maisie weighed up how to word her answer.

However she said it, it was going to hurt Janet. Sometimes Maisie felt her circumstances had too quickly slipped from possibilities into inevitabilities. She had never made a conscious choice to be a musician; her parents being who they were, it was expected she would learn music, but she had never displayed her father’s brilliance or her mother’s fiery genius. Just a clear-eyed grasp of the skill, an aptitude that was little more than intellectual, probably little more than genetic. Increasingly, she had begun to wonder if there was something else out there for her, something for which she would feel the pangs of obsession that Adrian said he felt for his work. To sort it out properly she needed space, air, perspective, none of which she could find in her parents’ sterile house during the endless subtropical summer. She cleared her throat, ventured a few words: “I thought I might go on a little trip away.”

“Where?”

Adrian squeezed her hand under the table. The two of them had already had this conversation in private.

“I thought I might go look up my grandmother.”

“Grandma Fielding? She’s ninety-five and

practically –”

“No. Not Dad’s mother.
Your
mother. In Yorkshire.”