The Girl by the River (17 page)

Tessa shook her head.

‘I’m not just being unkind to you, and neither is Miss O’Grady, and neither is your mother. No – don’t look away. Keep looking at my eyes, Tessa. This is to help
you with your life, child. If you don’t behave properly, like Lucy, then you won’t have a happy, successful life. You won’t have an education because no one will put up with you,
and if you don’t have an education you won’t be able to get a job and you won’t be able to grow up and get married and have a family of your own. Do you understand
that?’

Tessa nodded. She felt the words being chiselled into her soul, like letters on a tombstone. She glanced at her mother.

‘He’s right, Tessa. You’ve got to try and be more like Lucy,’ Kate said.

‘Yes – I agree,’ Miss O’Grady said. ‘Lucy’s such a good girl, and everyone likes her.’

‘You’ve caused your mother a lot of worry and heartache,’ said the Reverend Reminsy. ‘Do you understand that, Tessa?’

Tessa nodded, her small hands gripping the seat of the chair. She felt her life was over. She was a failure at being a human being. It seemed impossible to her. There was no way forward. She
looked at her mother and saw pain and anxiety in those bright brown eyes, eyes that usually shone with fun. ‘I’m sorry, Mummy,’ she whispered.

‘I should think you are,’ snapped Miss O’Grady.

Kate put her arm round Tessa’s shoulders. ‘Well, sorry is a good place to start,’ she said warmly.

‘You’re lucky to have such a kind mother,’ said Miss O’Grady, and her eyes glinted. ‘I hope we can start again, Tessa. Otherwise you will be sent away to a home for
bad children.’

Tessa’s mouth fell open. A home for bad children? Far away from the places she loved. Away from her own home and family.

That one comment appalled and frightened her. Shock waves cracked through her aura like arteries of ink. It wasn’t fair. Why should this bone-thin woman stir up such hatred in her? Tessa
wanted to give Miss O’Grady a poisoned apple like the witch in
Snow White
.

She got down from her chair and walked towards her teacher’s cruel eyes which seemed to be mocking her. She heard her mother’s anxious voice. ‘No, Tessa, sit down dear,
please.’

Suddenly the cocoon she had constructed around herself began to spin crazily. The white silk threads turned black and unravelled in little spirals and coils. She felt exposed, as if her beating
heart had been unwrapped and left on the floor in front of Miss O’Grady.

‘Tessa!’

Kate moved forward quickly and got her arms firmly around Tessa as the child turned deathly pale and lost consciousness. ‘I’m so sorry,’ Kate said, ‘it’s all too
much for her.’

1960

The young man stood at the edge of the woods, under a beech tree; the afternoon sun touched the texture of his long hair and the wiry crinkles of his beard. He stood so still
that he seemed part of the wood, a face staring from an ancient tree trunk, his bare feet disappearing into the leaf mould as if he had grown there.

He was listening to the voice of the beech tree, and watching the wind moving through cornfields far away, waiting for the same fan-shaped gusts to dive into the foliage above him. He was
thinking that the wind came from the sea. It tasted faintly of salt. It painted the ocean in his mind, in jewel-like colours, lace over silk in the long stretches between waves. The wind raised a
sable brush and painted him there, a crouched silhouette flying on a Malibu surfboard.

He wore a heavy denim jacket covered in bulging pockets he had stitched onto it in meaningful scraps of fabric: a square of his granny’s old pinny, a patch from the curtains he’d
once had, a piece of bottle green crushed velvet that had once been a cushion. He put his hand into it and pulled out a dog-eared notebook. Frowning, he added a few lines to the poem he’d
been writing.

He stared across the open hillside to the girl who was still lying there, not moving, the wind ruffling her chestnut hair. The man glanced at the shadows of the wood on the bright grassland and
figured it must have been an hour since she had moved.
Don’t get involved, Art
, he thought.
Women, you don’t need right now. Be free, man
.

But some magnetic force drew him towards the still figure of the girl. Something ancient in his soul. He padded over the springy turf, his bare feet enjoying the softness, his hair flowing in
the breeze. Why was he walking towards this girl? He didn’t know. He just let go, and let his feet walk.

There was an aura around the girl. It wasn’t welcoming. It was a cry. A light and a colour that actually cried out to the sky, to the land, and to him. The closer he got, the more Art
found himself captivated. He wanted to scoop the sleeping girl into his arms and take her to the wild shores of the Atlantic where the salt wind and the surf would heal her damaged soul.

He stood, on quiet feet, looking down at the satin folds of the sea-blue dress swirled over her slim body. An ant was crawling on one of her tanned legs. He watched it disappear into the diamond
hole in the front of her sandals. He watched a tendril of her chestnut hair reach out into the wind as if trying to touch him. He felt the cry emanating from her aura, like a harmonic echoing from
a bell, invisible, inaudible, but sensed in the sudden chill that crawled up his spine.

Art cleared his throat. It was a long time since he had spoken to anyone. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

There was no response. Art squatted down, thinking he might gently touch the girl’s hand. He studied it for a moment, noting the smooth, tanned skin, the elegant fingers and shell-like
nails which had been beautifully filed. The sun flashed on something metallic lying in a patch of thyme. A blue-black Gillette razorblade, a new one, with a stain of blood along its edge. ‘Oh
God!’ he gasped. ‘God – no.’ He saw the blood in the grass around Tessa’s left hand which was flung sideways, away from her face as if she couldn’t bear to
look.

Art acted swiftly then, his heart banging in fear, his mind hammering out prayers he’d learned long ago in another lifetime. He ripped the scarf from his neck, turned Tessa over and tied
it tightly around her arm just above the elbow, twisting, twisting it, and muttering, ‘Stop. Stop. Come on. Stop bleeding.’ He held her arm up straight and kept it there, watching it
turn blue as the flow of blood slowed to a trickle. He looked down at Tessa’s face, the chestnut lashes curled against her pale skin, her cheeks softly rounded, her brow smooth with a sublime
peacefulness that told him she was already far away in some undiscovered land.

Desperately he scanned the hillside for another human being, but there was no one. He knew the hospital was miles away. There wasn’t even a cottage nearby with a telephone.
The
road
! he thought,
it’s her only chance
. Gathering Tessa’s limp body into his strong arms, he ran towards the road, hearing the grinding gears of a car coming up the winding
hill. With bare feet on hot tarmac, he straddled the road and flagged down the battered Morris 10.

He looked through the passenger window at a scowling farmer in a trilby hat. ‘Can you help – please?’

The wings of the butterfly arched into Tessa’s consciousness like stained glass in the gloom of a church. Its eyes watched her with unassuming wisdom. Twice it flew away,
circled, and returned to pitch on her hand. Though her eyes were closed, Tessa sensed its cottony legs on her skin. She saw herself rise from the crumpled sea-blue satin and the chestnut curls of
her hair lying on the hillside. Floating, she glanced down at it with a sense of relief. Her spirit was leaving! She followed the flickering colours of the butterfly into the woods where it guided
her through towering tree trunks until its wings seemed to expand and dissolve into the spaces between the branches.

In a dream-like state, Tessa sat down on a moss-covered log, in a place she had visited before in her dreams. Fragrance drifted through the trees, from the haze of bluebells in the distance. A
stream trickled nearby, like tiny bells, drawing threads of glittering light over the roots of trees and into pools where cresses grew. The banks were cushioned with moss so green that the whole
wood seemed luminous with a light of its own.

Tessa stared into the light between the lime trees. It seemed to crackle like a sparkler she had held in her hand on firework night. It blazed with dazzling stars of silver and gold. From the
centre of the light footsteps emerged, making no sound, across the woodland floor. She sensed them, welcomed them, allowing the presence to arrive and enfold her in healing light. She raised her
left hand and turned it to look at her wrist with the blue veins like rivers in the sand. It shone, blue and white, and perfect. There was no cut. No blood. No pain. No reason. In spirit she was
perfect.

She turned to gaze into the timeless loving eyes of the man in a saffron robe who sat beside her on the log. Tessa knew him well. He had talked to her in daydreams and trances, always serious,
yet his eyes twinkled with mysterious humour. Like her mother’s eyes, they radiated reassurance. ‘All is well,’ he said. ‘You are welcome, Tessa. Stay here, and rest for as
long as you need. Take all the healing you need. There is no limitation. But when you feel ready, you must go back. It is not time for you to pass into spirit. Go back and be Tessa, and be ready
for change – a good change, and a kindred spirit – a friend to walk with you. You will know him by the intensity of his eyes.’

Tessa sighed. The longing to go home to the world of spirit ached in her heart. Wasn’t it enough? Fourteen friendless years? Fourteen years of being the one who ‘made trouble’.
She didn’t want to make trouble. She longed to be ‘normal’, like the girls she envied. Confident, happy girls, like Lucy, like Fiona. Girls who never saw what she saw or wanted
what she wanted or dreamed what she dreamed. Girls who had a place to go, a respectable niche in the world that would guarantee respectability. Not the wild, untrodden paths that Tessa wanted. She
wasn’t interested in anything her peer group talked about. Mostly it was clothes, boys, pop music, cookery. No one else wanted to talk about poetry, philosophy and art. Even those three
labels had a nameless beyond, a forbidden realm of mysticism, and that was where Tessa wanted to be. Banned from using her true gifts, she felt useless and unwanted, sick, sick, sick of trying to
conform. It seemed that as soon as she found something she loved and wanted to do, a barrier slammed down in front of her, fierce and iron hard, like a portcullis edged with merciless spikes.

‘You must go back.’ The man in the saffron robe spoke to her with love and kindness. ‘You are needed.’

‘I don’t feel needed,’ Tessa said. ‘No one needs ME.

‘Gaia does.’

‘Gaia? Who is that?’

‘Gaia is your mother planet. Planet earth. She is sick, Tessa, and your strength and knowledge will lead the way to her healing. Many will follow you. I urge you, at this time, to study
environmental issues. The Warriors of the Rainbow. The Findhorn Garden. The book called
Silent Spring
. Study them. Seek them out and do not let anyone stop you, Tessa. You are blessed with
intuition. Your time will come.’

Tessa stared into his eyes. In her dreamlike state she felt change wash over her like an ocean wave. She felt suddenly strong, like a figurehead on the prow of a boat. A strong woman with her
hair flying in the wind. A leader.
Is that me
? she thought, and the answer came from the man’s voice.

‘Yes, that is you. A strong woman. Not a girl. You were never a girl. You were born a woman. That is why you cried so much, Tessa.’

She nodded slowly. It made sense. More sense than anything she’d been told by the adults in her life. Yet part of her didn’t want to be a woman. She was afraid, always afraid.

‘You have nothing to fear but fear itself,’ said the man in the saffron robe. ‘You are on a journey. Look back with me and see how far you have come.’ He held out his
hands, and between them was an orb of pulsing light. Tessa watched it, mesmerised, and saw within it a succession of jewel-like images. Cowslips on the millstream. Raindrops on her skin. The
wildflower meadows. The wood of the singing nightingales. And the alabaster angel Freddie had carved for her. Then she saw books. Books of magic and beauty, poetry and truth. She saw Alfred Lord
Tennyson in the classroom, so bright, as if drawn by a pencil of golden light. Then she saw Jonti, and the horses, and the baby birds she had rescued, the creatures of the stream, the golden frogs
and shimmering dragonflies.

‘I do . . . actually like being on earth,’ she said slowly, letting the words dawn in her like a sunrise.

Only then did she know, beyond doubt, that she had to go back.

She opened her eyes, bravely, to the whiteness of a hospital, a place that had always filled her with terror. The smell of Dettol, the purposeful squeak of shoes, the rustle of starched aprons,
the ringing voices, the steel in the eyes of nurses.

But this time she could smell something different – an earthy, woody smell that didn’t belong there. A smell of turf and damp tweed. Her left arm felt cumbersome and strange. She
touched it and felt the hot tight bandage, the tips of her fingers protruding from it like crayons. Who had brought her here? She turned her head in the direction of the woody smell, and was
startled to see a pair of intense eyes watching her from a biblical kind of face.

‘Who are you?’ Tessa whispered.

The intense eyes crinkled and shone with a warm smile. ‘I was about to ask you that question,’ said Art.

Freddie was on the floor in his workshop, with Joan Jarvis’s lawnmower in bits around him. He looked up, startled to see a young man with long hair and the scruffiest,
weirdest clothes he had ever seen.
A blimin’ hippie
, was Freddie’s first thought, and furious rage burned through him. He’d heard about the hippies. A feckless bunch of
timewasters. Herbie had seen them in Glastonbury, ‘draped all over the market cross, picking their toes,’ Herbie had said. ‘We didn’t fight the war for that lot, did we? And
their hair! I could take me garden clippers to that. Chop the lot off, I would. Short back and sides. Dunno what this country’s coming to.’