Resurrectionists (7 page)

“If I’m not there just leave them at the door.”

Maisie went back into the cold. About a block further on, after passing a second-hand bookshop, a bakery, and an off-license (they couldn’t be
that
fundamentalist if they had an off-license) she came to Celia Parker’s second-hand shop. A bell jingled over the door as she entered. A grey-haired woman was folding woollen clothes behind the counter. She glanced up as Maisie approached.

“Good morning.”

“Hi,” said Maisie. “Do you take donations? I have a whole bunch of clothes and stuff that I’d like to give to charity.”

Celia Parker removed her glasses and smiled warmly. “Oh, you’re Australian, are you? How delightful. I simply adore that accent. You know I watch
Neighbours
every night. I bet you miss the sunshine.”

“Actually, it’s a nice change to be here.” At last, friendliness. Maisie felt herself relax into a smile. “It gets a bit too hot back home.”

“In answer to your question, yes we do take donations. What we don’t sell here we sell on to a trader, and all the money goes towards the church. Well, most of it. Some of it goes to the upkeep of the shop.”

“And would you be able to come and pick it up? I don’t have a car and I live a little too far to carry it all.”

“You’re living in Solgreve?”

“Yes. For the time being.”

Celia Parker’s smile had dwindled around the corners, but she still affected friendliness. “Well, I can send my son-in-law over to pick the things up this afternoon if you like. You’ll have to give me the address.”

“The cottage on Saint Mary’s Lane at the top of the cliff.”

And then the smile was gone. “Sybill Hartley’s place?”

“She was my grandmother.”

Even the voice was vague now. “I see.”

“So, this afternoon? Somebody will come to collect the things?”

“Yes . . . ah . . . we’ll see what we can do.” She had her glasses back on and was inspecting a fluffy protrusion on a red cardigan. “Goodbye.”

Maisie had been dismissed: that back-at-school feeling, when the headmistress had finished cautioning her over chewing-gum or hem-length. It was as bewildering as it was annoying. The words “Sybill Hartley” seemed to trigger a weird, Solgreve-specific malaise. The bell over the door jingled again as she walked out into the street. Two greying women chatting on the corner gave her a curious glance. She had never felt more conspicuous in her life. As she approached the cottage, she could see her grocery bags at the end of the pathway, outside the garden. Her first thought was that they were too lazy to take the bags all the way to the front door, but then a more disturbing thought occurred to her – perhaps they were too scared. Sybill’s house was, after all, a witch’s cottage. Exasperated, she picked up her bags, let herself into the house and went down to the kitchen to pack away the groceries. What on earth was there to be scared of? Her grandmother could hardly be dangerous, not now that she was dead.

“Ridiculous,” she said, slamming the freezer closed and scrunching an empty plastic bag between her hands. “Ridiculous superstition.”

She made tea and took it back to the lounge room. The bookcase by the fire was stuffed untidily with a variety of volumes. Dust-collecting statuettes and knick-knacks were crammed into corners, and a couple of dusty, antique-looking lanterns were lined up haphazardly on the top. Maisie took down a book about Yorkshire history and placed it on a small table near the fireplace. Following Sacha’s careful instructions, she soon had a fire crackling in the grate. She settled back in a comfortable chair with the book, and waited for the second-hand shop to come by for her grandmother’s things, absently picking at a ragged nail with her teeth.

Of course, they didn’t come. She knew they

wouldn’t. At four o’clock, when long night-time shadows already grew along the street, she moved all the junk down to the laundry, stacking it as neatly as she could by the washing machine. Tabby sat there, watching out the window, tail flicking from side to side.

“What are you waiting for?” she asked, giving the cat a rub behind the ears.

Tabby’s eyes didn’t waver. She kept them fixed on the back garden. Maisie felt uneasy but refused to admit the feeling had any foundation. Cats were allowed to do strange things. Humans, on the other hand, had to think and behave consistently. She was returning to the lounge room when she thought she heard a car engine outside. So she had been wrong, they had come. She went to the window and looked out to see a battered blue car parked across the road. The person inside – a man, she thought, though she couldn’t be sure – sat with his face turned towards the cottage. She waited, expecting him to get out and come to the door, but he didn’t.

“Well, are you coming in?” she said under her breath. Perhaps he needed persuading. She went to the door, opened it and stepped out.

“Hey!” she called. The engine started, the car pulled away and sped off. Maisie stood, bewildered, watching its tail-lights disappearing around the corner. What was going on? She looked around. Towards the cliffs, on the grass strip around the cemetery, an elderly woman with a dog had paused to watch her. When Maisie saw her, the woman quickly moved away.

Maisie came back inside and closed the door. Was she a curiosity, the witch’s granddaughter? She could have laughed, only she felt so lonely. All her fantasies of village life – getting to know the locals, downing pints with friendly farmers and milkmaids – were

evaporating. They hated her already. Should she be frightened? Were they capable of hurting her? Solgreve was so remote, who would she turn to in an emergency?

Reality check: Jesus freaks probably weren’t murderers.

God, she was sick of her own company. If she was lonely after three days, how was she going to make it through three months? She checked her watch and did her calculations: it was nearly three in the morning back home, and Adrian would be asleep. More importantly, she was definitely not going to phone him and wail about how lonely she was. She couldn’t afford it, and he wouldn’t appreciate it.

She would just get used to being on her own. But before long she found herself scrabbling around on the table near the phone for Cathy Ellis’s phone number. The weekdays were bearable, but the thought of an entire weekend in the muffled silence of her own company was too much to endure.

The phone rang forever before somebody finally answered it. “Hello?”

“Hi, I’m looking for Cathy Ellis.”

“Um . . . hang on. I’ll go check.”

Student accommodation. She was left waiting for nearly five minutes to muse on the cost of the call before Cathy picked up the phone.

“Hello, Cathy speaking.”

It disturbed Maisie how excited she was to hear another Australian accent. “Cathy, it’s Maisie Fielding. Remember me?”

“Oh my god. Maisie! I’m so glad to hear from you. Sarah said you might call. Where are you? What are you doing?”

“I’m in a little village called Solgreve, about two hours out of York. My grandmother died a few months ago and I’m sorting out her things. But I’m getting pretty lonely and was wondering if you were doing anything this weekend.”

“Lonely is my middle name. You should come

down here this weekend. Stay over. I can take one of the mattresses off the bed and you can sleep on the floor. I’ll show you round York, we can go out for breakfast.”

And even though Maisie had never much liked Cathy, she could hear the desperate note of loneliness in her voice and knew her own would sound like that in a few weeks if she didn’t take up the offer. It was time for her to grow up and admit that it wasn’t fair to have a prejudice against someone based on the fact that they wore batik prints.

“It sounds great.”

Bus timetables were consulted and it was decided that Cathy would meet her at the bus station in York on Saturday at noon. Cathy chatted for a few minutes about how expensive living in England was proving to be. Maisie was only half-listening. Outside she had heard a soft thump near the laundry door. Was it Tabby? There it was again. A soft thump and slither. If she hadn’t seen that cloaked figure the previous day she wouldn’t have suspected anything other than the cat, but her imagination was unstable.

“Hey, Cathy,” Maisie said, “you’re into all that supernatural stuff, aren’t you? Spirits and so forth.”

“I have an interest. Why?”

“Do you believe in ghosts?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen one.”

“What are the chances my grandmother is

haunting me?”

“Have you seen her?”

Maisie became embarrassed. “No, I’ve just heard a few noises. It’s probably nothing. This is an old house.”

“Let’s talk about it on the weekend,” Cathy suggested.

“Okay, sure.”

“See you Saturday.”

She replaced the receiver and strained her ears. No more sinister noises. “Tabby?” Softly, walking down the hallway; Tabby was on the washing machine, ears pricked up. She turned to look at Maisie, miaowed. Maisie stroked her tail, trying to relax.

“If you see the ghost of my grandmother, Tabby, be sure and tell me,” she said. “I’ve got a few questions I’d like to ask her. And I could use the company.”

It was sometimes the case that Adrian went for days without seeing his girlfriend’s parents, even though they all lived in the same house. If Janet was busy with students, and Roland was busy rehearsing orchestras, it was not unusual to have the house to himself. The first time he saw Janet since Maisie had left was Friday morning. He was in his pyjamas in the sunlit kitchen making toast for breakfast. She came in, as always perfectly dressed and tidy-haired, and gave him a bemused look.

“Dressed for a power meeting, I see,” she said.

“Sorry. I thought I was home alone.” He could still be embarrassed by being caught in transit wrapped in a towel or his pj’s. Now he had the Churchwheel’s contract, he and Maisie had to think seriously about moving out.

“Have you heard from Maisie?” she said, going to the cupboard for the coffee jar.

“Yes, I spoke to her Wednesday. She got there safe and well.”

“Did she mention anything about her

grandmother?”

Adrian looked up from buttering his toast. She had her head down, concentrating very hard on her coffee cup.

“Um . . . I guess so.” He didn’t want to have this conversation.

“So she knows about her then?”

“She found out that she was a fortune-teller.”

“Nothing else?”

“She said something about . . . well . . . it’s silly really.”

“About the arrests?”

“Arrests? What arrests?” Adrian was shocked. The kettle started whistling and Janet reached over to switch it off. She made her coffee in silence. Resolute silence.

“Janet,” Adrian said gently. “What was your mother arrested for?”

She shook her head. “It will all come out soon enough.”

“Was it to do with the other stuff . . . the witchcraft?”

“Oh, so Maisie knows about that. Ridiculous nonsense, isn’t it? Casting circles and saying incantations and all that rubbish.” She poured some milk in her coffee and made to leave the kitchen.

“You don’t believe in it?”

“The most magical thing my mother managed to do was make her daughter disappear.”

“Then what about the arrests?”

Janet put up a graceful white hand. “Don’t ask me anything else. Nobody would listen to me before she went, and I won’t talk about it now. She’ll find out soon enough.”

And with that she departed to the piano room, leaving Adrian standing in the kitchen to wonder what grandmothers can be arrested for, and if that should make any difference to Maisie’s safety.

Maisie found herself anxiously peering through the window as the bus pulled in to the stop outside York train station. York’s medieval walls stood cold and grey under the dim sky. Her eyes passed over them only briefly. She was looking instead for . . .

“Cathy!” She hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but when she saw Cathy Ellis standing there, long red hair tucked under a crocheted hat, skinny body wrapped tightly in a grey duffel coat, she couldn’t control her excitement. She was the first person off the bus.

“Maisie!” Cathy exclaimed, grabbing her in a bear hug which somehow didn’t seem inappropriate even though they had never been close. The most social thing they had ever done together was go out for coffee after choir rehearsals in a group of eight. Maisie had always found Cathy and her sister too blunt, too smugly comfortable with themselves, and way too fond of Adrian. But now, all was forgiven.

“What have you done to your beautiful hair?”

Cathy exclaimed.

“It bugged me so I got it cut.”

“Oh no. We all used to be so jealous of your hair.”

“It’s not that short.” Maisie self-consciously pulled at a curl.

“It barely comes to your shoulders. What did Adrian think?”

“He didn’t say anything.”

Cathy had taken her bag and grabbed her elbow, and was leading her away from the bus stop.

“I’m so glad to see you,” Cathy said. “I’ve been terribly lonely.”

“Don’t you have friends at your uni?”

She shook her head. “Not really. I’m doing

research, not coursework. The only subject I have is Old English and the students are all quite tight with each other because they’re doing a lot of classes together.”

“What are you researching?” They were crossing the road now, past a statue and under a huge tree which was probably fantastically green in summer, but now was bare.

“I’m still narrowing it down. Probably something about early medieval women’s domestic roles.”

“Sounds interesting.” Maisie didn’t mean it.

“It is.”

“I can carry my own bag if you like,” Maisie offered, feeling guilty.

“It’s fine. Let me spoil you. You’re the only Australian accent I’ve heard in nearly three months. How was the weather back home when you left?”

“Not too bad. Starting to get hot.”

“You know, I used to hate the heat when I lived there, but now I’d give anything for just a few days in the sunshine.”

Maisie shook her head. “I will not miss the Brisbane summer. I swear I will not.”