Resurrectionists (21 page)

“A winter Christmas is so much better than a summer one,” she said.

“Absolutely,” Cathy replied. “Just imagine, back home it’s probably thirty degrees already.”

“And humid. Don’t forget humid.”

“And families will be having outdoor Christmas lunches – cold meat because nobody can bear to cook in that weather – and there will be flies buzzing around and sweat patches under everyone’s armpits. They’ll wash it all down with cold beer or chilled riesling.”

Maisie sighed. “And there would be the sound of children splashing in swimming pools. Cicadas buzzing. The overripe smell of frangipani.”

“I told you you’d start to miss it.”

Maisie turned back to Cathy. “I don’t.”

“You can’t fool me.”

“It just seems so far away.”

“It is far away. Do you miss Adrian?”

Good question. Whenever she thought of Adrian these last few days, it was with an awful sense of guilt. “I miss him physically. I want to be able to put my arms around him.” But she didn’t want to go back to him. Not yet. And why was that? Did she want to wait and see how things progressed with Sacha? That was ridiculous. She spent a lot of time and energy on ridiculous thoughts lately.

“How wonderful to have a boyfriend to go home to. I’ve been loveless for longer than I can remember.”

The waiter brought their coffee. Maisie spooned sugar into it. “Aren’t there any nice guys at your uni?”

“There’s this one guy in my Old English class who seems nice but I’m pretty sure he’s gay. I found it hard enough to meet guys back home, but here it’s impossible.”

Maisie sipped her coffee. It was too strong. “Yuk.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Too strong.”

Cathy waved the waiter over and asked for some hot milk, which he brought back a few moments later. Maisie added some milk to her coffee and tried again.

“Better?” asked Cathy.

“Not bad. It’s drinkable.”

“Hey, how about your gypsy friend?”

“What about him?” Maisie said, her fingertips tingling. Guilt? Fear?

“I mean, do you think he has a girlfriend?”

“What? Why?”

“You could introduce me to him. You know, seeing as how I can’t meet guys down here.”

“Oh.” Was she serious?

“I’ve read a lot about gypsies. Does he have an accent?”

“A bit. But it’s only his mother who’s a gypsy really. His dad’s an anthropology professor or something.”

“Even better. He’s got good genes,
smart
genes.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know him that well.”

“But is he good-looking?”

Maisie couldn’t help herself. “Very. Very, very.”

Cathy raised her eyebrows. “Now, Maisie. I hope you’re not keeping him all for yourself. That would hardly be fair.”

“No, of course not. Really, I just don’t know him that well. Not well enough to set you up on a date in any case.”

“You like him, don’t you?” Cathy asked, smiling.

“He’s nice enough.”

“I mean
like
him – in the ten-year-old sense.”

Maisie couldn’t meet her eye. “I don’t know. He’s okay I guess. But, you know, I’m spoken for.”

“That’s right.”

“And I’d never cheat on Adrian.”

“Of course not. God, I’d kill you if you did. He’s such a sweetie.”

Maisie pushed her coffee away. She no longer had an appetite for it.

“Is it hard?” Cathy asked. “After being with someone for such a long time, is it hard not to get tempted?”

“I love Adrian,” Maisie said simply. “It’s not hard.”

And here she was thinking of Sacha again, thinking about those intimate things she had laid out in her mind in loving detail. And knowing it would never be like that, not really. It was a fantasy, and in the real world she would never do it. “Affairs are so sordid,”

she said, “and there’s
nobility
in unrequited longing.”

Cathy laughed. “I know I’ve said this before, but you are soooo lucky.”

But if that was true, how come she felt so

dissatisfied? “Thanks,” she said. “I know.”

***

Outside York Minster, a cold and graceful gothic cathedral on a windy corner, the twilight world of Christmas Eve gathered, with all its tumult of anticipation and goodwill. Maisie stopped at the street corner, Cathy by her side, shivering and wishing she wasn’t going to be alone on Christmas Day.

“Shall we go inside?” Cathy said. “I know it’s a while before the service starts, but it’ll be warmer.”

“Good idea. My ears are aching.”

“It might snow.”

That would be too perfect. Too perfect to enjoy. It would simply make her melancholy. Miserable. They found their way inside, sat right at the back wall so they could fit their overnight bags between their feet. Huge vaulted ceilings soared above them, and a pipe organ played quietly. Maisie leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes. Cathy was fiddling with the program, making comments to Maisie about her favourite carols.

Under her skin. This whole business with Sacha had got under her skin. She’d only met him less than three weeks ago, had only seen him in the flesh three times. But as she drifted into sleep at night, in her fantasies they were intimately acquainted, shared everything, knew every inch of each other’s bodies. She simply had to stop thinking about him.

“Are you okay?”

Maisie rejoined the real world. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

She had vowed she wouldn’t show Cathy how

miserable she was about spending Christmas alone, didn’t want to make her feel guilty.

The Minster filled slowly. There weren’t enough seats and some people had to stand in the nave. Maisie watched them all, in groups and families, laughing, expectant. Tonight they would go to bed with Christmas tree lights left glittering in their lounge rooms, then wake each other up tomorrow to share presents and Christmas lunches and reminiscences and . . . damn, she was aching with it. Aching for company.

Suddenly the quiet organ music stopped. The chattering voices continued for a moment, and then the organist hit the volume and blasted out
The First
Noel
. The choir filed in: small boys and bearded men in blue and white sang
Hark, the Herald Angels
. Then the congregation sang, then there was a reading from the Bible. This sequence of events repeated for the next two hours while Maisie sat gazing around her at the ancient stone walls, wondering if ever in the history of the Minster such a miserable person as Maisie Fielding had moped through a Christmas service.

As soon as the service was over, while the pipe organ played quiet departure music, Cathy checked her watch. “I’m going to have to hurry if I’m to catch my train.”

“Well, go now. Before the crowd.”

Cathy pulled her bag up onto her lap. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

Maisie wasn’t at all sure she’d be okay. “Uh-huh.”

“Really?”

No, no, no.
Tears were springing to her eyes and she concentrated hard on not letting them spill over.

“Go on, you’ll miss your train.”

“You’re crying.”

“No, I’m not.” Dammit, she
was
crying. “It’s just that the service was very moving.”

Cathy grabbed her in her arms and pressed her close. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry. It was my choice to be here.” Maisie could feel Cathy’s ribs through her coat, there was so little of her to hold on to.

Cathy released her. “I really have to go. Are you coming?”

“No, I’ll sit here a moment longer and listen to the music. Thanks for that info about the Reverend.”

“Any time.”

Maisie cleared her throat, composed herself. “If you could find out anything about their attachment to the cemetery . . .” Maisie had told her about the curses, about being called a witch after visiting her grandmother’s grave.

“Sure, I’ll ask around at uni.” She looked anxiously towards the door. “I really have to go. I’ll call you soon.”

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

Cathy dashed off, red hair swinging. Maisie sighed and sank further into her overcoat. Too cold everywhere. She had booked a room in a B&B close by. Soon it would be too late to check in. She pulled herself to her feet and joined the slow queue shuffling out the front door. Bells rang on the crisp air outside. She walked away from the Minster and found a little supermarket, ducked inside and wandered in the yellow light, looking for ways to treat herself tomorrow. Chocolate, chips, biscuits, soft drink, wine –
don’t shop when you’re hungry, Maisie, or
desperately miserable
. She put some of the things back, was having second thoughts about the wine. All around her people were grabbing bottles of red, laughing among themselves.
It’s Christmas, it’s
Christmas, hurrah we’re all happy.
Maisie felt herself sink lower. Instead of putting the wine back, she grabbed a second bottle. She would spend the day sauced, consign herself to oblivion for that awful twenty-four hours when everyone else in the world was enjoying the festive season.

Dammit.

She checked her watch. In twenty minutes the last bus left for Whitby. Maybe Sacha was home. She left her shopping basket on an empty shelf and took the two bottles of wine up to the counter, and in a few minutes, between the tolls of Christmas bells, she was hurrying towards the bus stop.

Two hours later, Maisie stepped out of the warm bus into the night chill at Whitby. It was after nine o’clock. A few cabs waited at the rank near the bus stop and she wavered, thinking to hop straight into one, amongst warm air and upholstery, and head home to Tabby. Instead, she found a phone box and grabbed the phone directory, looked up Sacha’s address and scribbled it down.

But of course, she had no idea where his

street was and Whitby was a big place. She glanced back over her shoulder towards the bus stop. The last taxi on the rank was just being engaged by a well-dressed woman and man who had been on the bus with her. A service station was open a few blocks away so she headed towards it. The burly

fellow behind the counter gave her directions and she was on her way.

The streets of Whitby were much quieter than York. As she headed towards the sea, she found herself mostly alone. The wind whipped past her ears and she pulled her hat down close. Her hair would probably look terrible by the time she got to his place, her eyes would be streaming and her nose running, but it couldn’t be helped. Eventually she approached the seafront road, looked left and right, then on a hunch headed to the left. Ten minutes later she was heading in the other direction. Eventually came to an old building, painted white, clearly a block of flats. She went up to the door, found the doorbell marked
Lupus
and rang it. No answer. She tried again. Waited. It took her a few minutes to accept that he simply wasn’t home. She turned, sagged against the door, the weight of loneliness heavy on her shoulders. Of course he wasn’t home, it was Christmas. She was the only person in the world who was spending it alone. This time she let herself cry, wandering back down the stairs and out onto the street. Fairy lights were strung between power poles, swinging in the breeze. She crossed the road, found a seat on the cliff-top a few metres from a street light, and collapsed into it, watching waves breaking on the shore below. The sea didn’t know it was Christmas. She cried, then wept, then sobbed, tears tracing icy paths down her cheeks. Lights glimmered out at sea –

perhaps even fishermen on rimy boats were sharing company in warm, lit cabins. The longing bubbled up inside her, threatened to break her open. Where was Sacha? Damn him. Was it possible to yearn to death?

She gave vent to her tears for as long as she could before admitting it was useless, and made her way back towards the bus stop. Two streets away a taxi approached, and she hailed it and got inside.

“I want to go to Solgreve,” she said, thankfully closing out the aching cold. “Is that too far?”

“It’s a job,” the taxi driver said, setting his meter.

“And can you turn the heat up a bit?”

“Sure.”

Just over half an hour later she paid him and hoisted her bag over her shoulder, looking up the path to her cottage. “Thanks,” she said. “Have a good Christmas.”

“I’m Jewish,” he replied.

“Oh.” She couldn’t remember the name of the Jewish festival, so she just said, “Have a good evening, then.”

“You too. What’s left of it.”

Her watch said eleven o’clock. She let herself inside. No Christmas lights, no Christmas tree. She had left the radiator on in her bedroom for Tabby, and found the cat in there, curled up on the end of the bed.

“Hey, Tabby,” she said.

Tabby looked up, chirped a greeting, stretched her legs. Maisie kicked her boots off, stripped to her underwear and climbed into bed. A feeling of sweet weariness, the kind one only experiences after crying like a baby for a good long time, settled over her. Tabby curled up over her knees for a few minutes, then thought better of it and went off in search of food. Tonight, Maisie promised herself, she would not think of Sacha. She would just go to sleep.

Imagining his arms were around her.

Something had changed about the girl.

The Reverend knew it the second he laid eyes on her on Christmas morning. God only knew why Sybill’s granddaughter (he always forgot her name) had decided to come to his Christmas service anyway. A generous man might think she was there to worship, but he could not be generous with her, having known her grandmother. He suspected she was here to upset him. The kind of thing Sybill would have done.

“Unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord,” he began, reading from his large print Bible. But his eyes kept returning to her dark head, bent over her hands, in the very back pew of the church. Almost as though she didn’t want to be noticed. But how could he not notice her? She had changed, he could sense it. He was a man trained in the ways of the soul, could know things about people just by looking at them. Credulity might call it reading auras, or having a sixth sense, but for him it was merely the atunement of the spirit, as was required for those who represented the Lord. Something had definitely awakened in her. This morning, more than ever, she reminded him of Sybill. Sybill Hartley, village witch, snoop, amateur detective and, in the end, the holder of too much knowledge, a terrible threat to the community and their ongoing health and happiness.