The Firebird (3 page)

I pulled my mind back, made an effort, and the visions stopped, but there was no way to unsee what I had seen, or to ignore what I’d learnt.

It was still very much on my mind the next morning.

I met Vasily early for breakfast at his favourite restaurant, the St Pancras Grand, on the upper concourse of the train station. He liked the retro English menu, and the elegance of the place with gold leaf on the ceiling and dark wood and leather bistro-style seating. We had a lovely chat about the Surikov, the painting he was keen to have me buy for him while I was in St Petersburg, but it was what he said as he left me that changed the whole course of my day.

He ordered a takeaway meal at the end of our breakfast, another whole plate of eggs Benedict, and so I teased, ‘You’ll be putting on weight, if you start eating two breakfasts.’

‘It’s not for me,’ he said, ‘it is for the old man at the end of my street. He has no one to live with him, so he eats poorly some days. I have seen it. Whenever I come here, I bring him eggs Benedict.’

‘You’re a good man, do you know that?’

He shrugged it aside. ‘It’s not good. It is right. When a person needs help, then you help them. What else would you do?’

I thought about that, after Vasily left. From my handbag I took out the envelope that I’d brought with me to post back to Margaret Ross, and I looked down at the address for a long time, and then I walked from the restaurant and round to King’s Cross and I bought a return ticket up to Dundee.

Because he’d been right. Margaret Ross needed help. I could help her. The truth was, I couldn’t
not
help her. I’d never have lived through the shame.

What Sebastian had told her was perfectly true: there was really no way, by conventional means, to determine her Firebird’s provenance. But if I were to hold it again, and to concentrate, I might find some information imprinted upon it to help me know where I should look for the proof that the carving had once been the gift of an empress. In less than a week I would be in St Petersburg, there on the ground, where the first Empress Catherine had lived, ruled and died, and where Margaret’s mysterious ancestor, Anna, had most likely been in that flash of a vision I’d seen. I’d have time, then, to dig around, learn what I could, ask my colleagues who worked in the Hermitage … there were a number of ways I could try to help.

Starting with holding the Firebird.

Nobody needed to know, I assured myself. Not if I simply asked Margaret Ross if I could look at the carving again, maybe study it privately, just for a moment. She’d see me holding it, no more than that. No one needed to know.

And secure in that reasoning, I started north on the train.

The doubts didn’t start to creep in for a couple of hours. I had been going over the plan in my mind when I’d suddenly noticed a hole in it, and having noticed that hole it had seemed to grow larger until it was all I could see.

Empress Catherine and Anna, I suddenly realised, had lived nearly three hundred years ago, and since that time countless people would likely have handled the carving, obscuring those earlier imprints with later ones, clouding my readings.

The vision I’d seen had been something spontaneous, something I hadn’t controlled. If I wanted to be any help at all to Margaret Ross now, and given I might only have one chance to hold the carving, I’d have to be sure I could sift through the levels and layers of time to arrive at the right one.

And that was why, when my train slid into Waverly station at Edinburgh, I didn’t change to the train for Dundee, as I ought to have done. I stepped right off the platform, and walked up the ramp from the underground dimness to daylight, with Edinburgh Castle set high on its unyielding rock just ahead of me. It was why I walked the busy length of Princes Street, and turned towards the river, and was heading down the hill now to the one place I’d been certain I would never go again.

The house looked like all of the rest of the old Georgian houses that ringed the small private park, making a circle around the tall trees that were fenced in and gated and rimmed by a hedge of dense holly. The houses rose four storeys tall, all with similar rows of large white-painted windows set into their grey stone façades, and high steps leading up to their similar doors with arched transoms above.

No one would ever have guessed that the house I was standing in front of was one of the foremost centres for the study of the unexplained: the Emerson Institute of Parapsychology, named after J. Norman Emerson, the Canadian archaeologist who’d pioneered the use of psychics in his expeditions in a quest to study what might lie beyond the limits of man’s current scientific understanding.

I had never heard of Emerson, or the Institute, until four years ago. My elder brother, Colin, was the one who’d put me on to it. One morning he’d come down to breakfast looking even more thoughtful than usual. Giving a nod to the stack of brochures at the side of my plate he’d remarked, ‘You’ve decided on Edinburgh, then, for your Masters?’

‘Yes,’ I’d told him. ‘Russian studies and art history.’

My mother had smiled. ‘Russian studies,’ she’d said. ‘You can study a Russian for nothing, at home. Just look there.’ And she’d given a nod to our grandfather, reading his newspaper at the far end of the table. He’d remained dignified, as though he hadn’t heard, but he had folded his newspaper down for an instant to let his eyes smile at me.

Colin had continued, ‘Then you might want to get to know these people.’ He’d handed me a page he’d printed out from his computer, all about the Emerson Institute. He’d watched me while I read it through, then added, ‘They do studies there, real scientific studies that might help you understand that thing you do.’

The air had stilled and thickened in the kitchen. And my grandfather had set his paper down. His eyes had lost their smile. ‘You don’t ever tell anyone what you can do, Nicola. Do you hear? Always I’ve told you, since you were a little girl. Never tell anyone.’ And when my mother had tried to placate him he’d lifted a hand. ‘No. This is not for argument. I know,’ he’d said, in a tone harsh with feeling. ‘I
know
what can happen. You keep this a secret. You tear up that paper.’

My brother had calmly remarked that this wasn’t the Soviet Union, and the researchers in Edinburgh were not the KGB, who had done God knows what to my grandfather back in the sixties, when they’d learnt through his neighbours that he had … abilities.

What he had undergone in their intelligence programme had been so traumatic he never had told us the details, but I’d felt the depth of his pain and concern as his eyes had met mine down the length of the table that morning. ‘Nicola,’ he’d said to me, ‘tear up that paper.’

I’d done as he’d asked. But I hadn’t forgotten. And then in my final year, when I’d come back from my term in St Petersburg, I’d seen an ad in the paper for volunteers – anyone, just normal people, not psychics – to help take part in a new study the Emerson Institute was just beginning. No risk, I had thought. I could see what they did without ever revealing what I could do.

So I had answered the ad.

I cut those memories off, deliberately. At the edge of the green park I stood for a moment and gathered my courage, then drawing a steadying breath I crossed over the road and went in.

The receptionist was new, but the other woman standing with her back towards me, leaning on the tall reception counter, was no stranger.

Dr Keary Fulton-Wallace wasn’t psychic. She’d had no clue I’d be coming, and when she turned round her features plainly showed her surprise. I’d never known her age. I knew she’d told me once she had been a researcher for over twenty years, and so must be approaching fifty, but she had a youthful energy that made that seem impossible. She would have made a perfect Peter Pan, I thought, in pantomimes.

Tossing her bright cap of auburn hair out of her eyes, she recovered herself and smiled at me. ‘Nicola! How wonderful to see you.’ Just like that. As though the past two years had never happened.

I hovered. ‘I’m sorry, I ought to have rung first. Is this a good time?’

‘Yes, of course. Come, let’s sit in my office.’

Her office still looked the same. Only the calendar over her desk had changed, no longer seascapes but views of a garden. She shifted a pile of papers from one of the chairs at the side of her desk. ‘Let me get us some tea. Do you still drink the green kind?’

The prodigal son must have felt like this, I thought – relieved and embarrassed and touched by the fuss being made.

‘Nonsense,’ was her answer to my protests that she didn’t need to wait on me. ‘You’re very welcome company today, and I was just about to stop and take a break myself, at any rate.’

She fetched the tea, and a half-plundered packet of Hobnobs, and settled in as though I were an old friend stopping by to chat. She’d made me feel just this relaxed and this welcome two years ago, when I had first ventured in, all uncertain, and she had explained what they did at the Institute.

‘Parapsychologists don’t try to prove extrasensory perception exists,’ she’d said then. ‘We test hypotheses, like any other scientist, and our test results here have shown overall evidence that would support the hypothesis that ESP does exist. So we form more hypotheses, run more tests, try to find out – if it’s actually there – how it works.’

I’d taken part in two studies she’d led. The first one, where I’d hidden in among the normal people who had volunteered. And one more, after that.

‘I had a question,’ I said now, ‘about the psychometry study.’

‘Oh, yes?’

The question made more sense, I reasoned, if I backtracked just a little and explained about my job now, and the fact I had a carving that I wanted to authenticate. ‘I thought I might try using my … I might just try psychometry, and see if that can lead me somewhere, help me find the proof of where it came from.’

She thought that was a very good idea. ‘You know me. It’s the practical applications of ESP that interest me the most. How can I help?’

‘Well, to properly do this, I need to be able to zero in on one particular person who once owned the carving,’ I said, ‘and I thought I remembered you saying there might be a way to improve … to get better at doing that.’

‘You did rather well at it, as I recall.’

‘Did I?’

Lifting her brows at my tone, she said, ‘Nicola, you had the second-best scores in the study. Or you would have done, if you had …’

‘If I had finished it.’

‘Yes.’ It was simply a statement of fact, with no judgement attached. ‘I could look up your actual scores, if you like. I still have them on file.’ With a swivel and roll of her chair she pulled open a drawer in her filing cabinet and drew out a folder, then opened it up on her desk and examined the papers inside. ‘Here it is,’ she said, passing it over.

I looked at the scores and I knew they weren’t high enough. Not to do what I would need to do. My disappointment must have shown, because she reassured me with, ‘But it appears to be a skill that can improve with practice. Some of our subjects who started with scores rather lower than yours averaged nearly that high by the end of the study. You might have done better yourself, if …’

I said it again for her. ‘If I had stayed.’

She’d never asked me why I hadn’t, and I knew she wouldn’t ask me now. Her scientific need to know was tempered with an empathy that seemed to make her understand my conflicts. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘You can practise it anywhere, really.’

Except, I thought bleakly, I didn’t have time. If I were to help Margaret Ross, I’d have to find a quick way to improve, or …

I gave a nod down at the file on her desk, and said, ‘I know you’re not allowed to tell me how anyone else did, but can you just tell me … the highest score, was it … ?’

‘Yes.’ Her lively green eyes plainly showed she knew I knew exactly whom she meant. ‘He scored direct hits, every time.’ She did give in a little, then, to curiosity. ‘Do you still see him?’

‘No.’ It wasn’t a lie, I decided. Not really. I didn’t see him in the sense that she was asking me.

‘Well.’ She defused the moment deftly with a smile. ‘I’m very glad you thought to come and see
me
. Another biscuit?’

‘Thanks, but no. I should be getting back up to the station.’

‘What time’s your train?’

I wasn’t altogether sure. I’d seen a couple of later Dundee trains listed up on the departures board at Waverly, so I knew that my odds of catching one of them were fairly good. But not wanting to let Dr Fulton-Wallace know that I’d been so haphazard with my travel plans, I made up a time. ‘Six o’clock.’

She stood with me. ‘It really was lovely to see you. I’m glad that you’re doing so well down in London.’

I thanked her and turned away, then stopped at the door. And because I felt I owed it to her, I looked back. ‘I’m really sorry,’ I said, ‘that I didn’t stay and finish what I started.’

Her eyes were understanding. ‘It’s never too late. Anytime you feel ready, come back and I’ll finish your testing myself.’

But she probably knew from my face that I wouldn’t be back.

It was good to step out in the sunlight where lengthening shadows walked with me back up to the still-crowded pavement of Princes Street. It seemed a short walk back to Waverly station. The woman at the ticket window gave a dry nod as I showed her my ticket and told her, ‘I missed my connection.’

‘Aye, so you did. That train to Dundee left two hours ago.’ Squinting down at her schedule she told me, ‘I’ve one at 18:18 that’ll get you there at 19:44. Would that suit you?’

I didn’t answer straight away. My thoughts had slipped backwards to yesterday morning – the dim, shadowed room with its grey light that might have been filtered through clouds, or through rain, that I’d viewed through the eyes of a man waking up in his bed.

He’d scored perfectly, so Dr Fulton-Wallace had said. Every time we’d been given an object and asked to zero in on just one person who had used it, he had done it. Every time.

I wavered.

Only for a moment. Then I roused myself and faced the waiting woman at the ticket window. ‘Actually, I’ve changed my mind.’ I put the Dundee ticket in my pocket, and breathed deeply before telling her, ‘I’d like to have a single, please, to
Berwick-upon
-Tweed.’