The Dragon-Charmer

I will have her.

Now we search the smoke for her, skimming other visions, bending our dual will to a single task. But the fire-magic is wayward and unpredictable: it may sometimes be guided but it cannot be forced. The images unravel before us in a jumble, distorted by our pressure, quick-changing, wavering, breaking up. Irrelevancies intrude, a cavalcade of monsters from the long-lost past, mermaid, unicorn, Sea Serpent, interspersed with glimpses which might, or might not, be more significant: the hatchling perching on a dark, long-fingered hand, a solitary flower opening suddenly in a withered garden like the unlidding of a watching eye. Time here has no meaning, but in the world beyond Time passes, years maybe, ere we see her again. And the vision, when it comes, takes us off guard, a broad vista unwinding slowly in an interlude of distraction, a road that meanders with the contours of the land, white puffball clouds trailing in the wake of a spring breeze. A horseless car is travelling along the road: the sunlight winks off its steel-green coachwork. The roof is folded back to leave the top open; music emanates from a mechanical device within, not the raucous drumbeat of the rabble but a music of deep notes and mellow harmonies, flowing like the hills. The girl is driving the car. She looks different, older, her small-boned face hollowed into shape, tapering, purity giving way to definition, a slight pixie-look tempered by the familiar gravitas. More than ever, it is a face of secrets. Her hair is cut in a straight line across her brow and on level with her jaw. As the car accelerates the wind fans it out from her temples and sweeps back her fringe, revealing that irregularity of growth at the parting that we call the Witch’s Crook. Her mouth does not smile. Her companion – another girl – is of no importance. I resist the urge to look too closely, chary of alarming her, plucking Sysselore away from the smoke and letting the picture haze over.

When we need her, we will find her. I know that now.

We must be ready.

II

She felt it only for an instant, like a cold prickling on the back of her neck: the awareness that she was being watched. Not watched in the ordinary sense or even spied on, but surveyed through occult eyes, her image dancing in a flame or refracted through a crystal prism. She didn’t know how she knew, only that it was one of many instincts lurking in the substratum of her mind, waiting their moment to nudge at her thought. Her hands tightened on the steering wheel. The sensation was gone so quickly she almost believed she might have imagined it, but her pleasure in the drive was over. For her, Yorkshire would always be haunted. ‘Fern –’ her companion was talking to her, but she had not registered a word ‘– Fern, are you listening to me?’

‘Yes. Sorry. What did you say?’

‘If you’d been listening you wouldn’t have to ask. I never saw you so abstracted. I was just wondering why you should want to do the deed in Yarrowdale, when you don’t even like the place.’

‘I don’t dislike it: it isn’t that. It’s a tiny village miles from anywhere: short stroll to a windswept beach, short scramble to a windswept moor. You can freeze your bum off in the North Sea or go for bracing walks in frightful weather. The countryside is scenic – if you like the countryside. I’m a city girl.’

‘I know. So why –?’

‘Marcus, of course. He thinks Yarrowdale is quaint. Characterful village church, friendly local vicar. Anyway, it’s a good excuse not to have so many guests. You tell people you’re doing it quietly, in the country, and they aren’t offended not to be invited. And of those you do invite, lots of them won’t come. It’s too far to trek just to stay in a draughty pub and drink champagne in the rain.’

‘Sounds like a song,’ said Gaynor Mobberley. ‘Champagne in the rain.’ And: ‘Why do you always do what Marcus wants?’

‘I’m going to marry him,’ Fern retorted. ‘I want to please him. Naturally.’

‘If you were in love with him,’ said Gaynor, ‘you wouldn’t be half so conscientious about pleasing him all the time.’

‘That’s a horrible thing to say.’

‘Maybe. Best friends have a special licence to say horrible things, if it’s really necessary.’

‘I like him,’ Fern said after a long pause. ‘That’s much more important than love.’

‘I like him too. He’s clever and witty and very good company and quite attractive considering he’s going a bit thin on top. That doesn’t mean I want to marry him. Besides, he’s twenty years older than you.’

‘Eighteen. I prefer older men. With the young ones you don’t know what they’ll look like when they hit forty. It could be a nasty shock. The older men have passed the danger point so you know the worst already.’

‘Now you’re being frivolous. I just don’t understand why you can’t wait until you fall in love with someone.’

Fern gave a shivery laugh. ‘That’s like … oh, waiting for a shooting star to fall in your lap, or looking for the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow.’

‘Cynic.’

‘No. I’m not a cynic. It’s simply that I accept the impossibility of romantic idealism.’

‘Do you remember that time in Wales?’ said her friend, harking back unfairly to college days. ‘Morwenna Rhys gave that party at her parents’ house on the bay, and we all got totally drunk, and you rushed down the beach in your best dress straight into the sea. I can still see you running through the waves, and the moonlight on the foam, and your skirt flying. You looked so wild, almost eldritch. Not my cool, sophisticated Fern.’

‘Everyone has to act out of character sometimes. It’s like taking your clothes off: you feel free without your character but very naked, unprotected. Unfinished. So you get dressed again – you put on yourself – and then you know who you are.’

Gaynor appeared unconvinced, but an approaching road junction caused a diversion. Fern had forgotten the way, and they stopped to consult a map. ‘Who’ll be there?’ Gaynor enquired when they resumed their route. ‘When we arrive, I mean.’

‘Only my brother. I asked Abby to keep Dad in London until the day before the wedding. He’d only worry about details and get fussed, and I don’t think I could take it. I can deal with any last minute hitches. Will never fusses.’

‘What’s he doing now? I haven’t seen him for years.’

‘Post-grad at York. Some aspect of art history. He spends a lot of time at the house, painting weird surreal pictures and collecting even weirder friends. He loves it there. He grows marijuana in the garden and litters the place with beer cans and plays pop music full blast; our dour Yorkshire housekeeper pretends to disapprove but actually she dotes on him and cossets him to death. We still call her Mrs Wicklow although her Christian name is Dorothy. She’s really too old to housekeep but she refuses to retire so we pay a succession of helpers for her to find fault with.’

‘The old family retainer,’ suggested Gaynor.

‘Well … in a way.’

‘What’s the house like?’

‘Sort of grey and off-putting. Victorian architecture at its most unattractively solid. We’ve added a few mod cons but there’s only one bathroom and no central heating. We’ve always meant to sell it but somehow we never got around to it. It’s not at all comfortable.’

‘Is it haunted?’

There was an appreciable pause before Fern answered.

‘Not exactly,’ she said.

They had been friends since their days at college, but Gaynor sometimes felt that for all their closeness she knew little of her companion. Outwardly, Fern Capel was smart, successful, self-assured, with a poise that more than compensated for her lack of inches, a sort of compact neatness which implied I am the right height; it is everyone else who is too tall. She had style without flamboyance, generosity without extravagance, an undramatic beauty, a demure sense of humour. A colleague had once said she ‘excelled at moderation’; yet Gaynor had witnessed her, on rare occasions, behaving in a way that was immoderate, even rash, her slight piquancy of feature sharpened into a disturbing wildness, an alien glitter in her eyes. At twenty-eight, she had already risen close to the top in the PR consultancy where she worked. Her fiancé, Marcus Greig, was a well-known figure of academe who had published several books and regularly aired both his knowledge and his wit in the newspapers and on television. ‘I plan my life,’ she had told her friend, and to date everything seemed to be proceeding accordingly, smooth-running and efficient as a computer programme. Or had it been ‘I planned my life’? Gaynor wondered, chilling at the thought, as if, in a moment of unimaginable panic and rejection, Fern had turned her back on natural disorder, on haphazard emotions, stray adventure, and had dispassionately laid down the terms for her future. Gaynor’s very soul shrank from such an idea. But on the road to Yorkshire, with the top of the car down, the citified sophisticate had blown away, leaving a girl who looked younger than her years and potentially vulnerable, and whose mood was almost fey. ‘She doesn’t want to marry him,’ Gaynor concluded, seeking a simple explanation for a complex problem, ‘but she hasn’t the courage to back out.’ Yet Fern had never lacked courage.

The house was a disappointment: solidly, stolidly Victorian, watching them from shadowed windows and under frowning lintels, its stoic façade apparently braced to withstand both storm and siege. ‘This is a house that thinks it’s a castle,’ Fern said. ‘One of these days, I’ll have to change its mind.’

Gaynor, who assumed she was referring to some kind of designer face-lift, tried to visualise hessian curtains and terracotta urns, and failed.

Inside, there were notes of untidiness, a through-draught from too many open windows, the incongruous blare of a radio, the clatter of approaching feet. She was introduced to Mrs Wicklow, who appeared as grim as the house she kept, and her latest assistant, Trisha, a dumpy teenager in magenta leggings wielding a dismembered portion of hoover. Will appeared last, lounging out of the drawing room which he had converted into a studio. The radio had evidently been turned down in his wake and the closing door suppressed its beat to a rumour. Gaynor had remembered him tall and whiplash-thin but she decided his shoulders had squared, his face matured. Once, he had resembled an angel with the spirit of an urchin; now, she saw choirboy innocence and carnal knowledge, an imp of charm, the morality of a thief. There was a smudge of paint on his cheek which she almost fancied might have been deliberate, the conscious stigma of an artist. His summer tan turned grey eyes to blue; there were sun-streaks in his hair. He greeted her as if they knew each other much better than was in fact the case, gave his sister an idle peck, and offered to help with the luggage.

‘We’ve put you on the top floor,’ he told Gaynor. ‘I hope you won’t mind. The first floor’s rather full up. If you’re lonely I’ll come and keep you company.’

‘Not Alison’s room?’ Fern’s voice was unexpectedly sharp.

‘Of course not.’

‘Who’s Alison?’ Gaynor asked, but in the confusion of arrival no one found time to answer.

Her bedroom bore the unmistakable stamp of a room that had not been used in a couple of generations. It was shabbily carpeted, ruthlessly aired, the bed-linen crackling with cleanliness, the ancient brocades of curtain and upholstery worn to the consistency of lichen. There was a basin and ewer on the dresser and an ugly slipware vase containing a hand-picked bunch of flowers both garden and wild. A huge mirror, bleared with recent scouring, reflected her face among the spots, and on a low table beside the bed was a large and gleaming television set. Fern surveyed it as if it were a monstrosity. ‘For God’s sake remove that thing,’ she said to her brother. ‘You know it’s broken.’

‘Got it fixed.’ Will flashed Gaynor a grin. ‘This is five-star accommodation. Every modern convenience.’

‘I can see that.’

But Fern still seemed inexplicably dissatisfied. As they left her to unpack, Gaynor heard her say: ‘You’ve put Alison’s mirror in there.’

‘It’s not Alison’s mirror: it’s ours. It was just in her room.’

‘She tampered with it…’

Gaynor left her bags on the bed and went to examine it more closely. It was the kind of mirror that makes everything look slightly grey. In it, her skin lost its colour, her brown eyes were dulled, the long dark hair which was her principal glory was drained of sheen and splendour. And behind her in the depths of the glass the room appeared dim and remote, almost as if she were looking back into the past, a past beyond warmth and daylight, dingy as an unopened attic. Turning away, her attention was drawn to a charcoal sketch hanging on the wall: a woman with an Edwardian hairstyle, gazing soulfully at the flower she held in her hand. On an impulse she unhooked it, peering at the scrawl of writing across the bottom of the picture. There was an illegible signature and a name of which all she could decipher was the initial E. Not Alison, then. She put the picture back in its place and resumed her unpacking. In a miniature cabinet at her bedside she came across a pair of handkerchiefs, also embroidered with that tantalising E. ‘Who was E?’ she asked at dinner later on.

‘Must have been one of Great-Cousin Ned’s sisters,’ said Will, attacking Mrs Wicklow’s cooking with an appetite that belied his thinness.

‘Great-Cousin –?’

‘He left us this house,’ Fern explained. ‘His relationship to Daddy was so obscure we christened him Great-Cousin. It seemed logical at the time. Anyway, he had several sisters who preceded him into this world and out of it: I’m sure the youngest was an E. Esme … no. No. Eithne.’

‘I don’t suppose there’s a romantic mystery attached to her?’ Gaynor said, half ironic, half wistful. ‘Since I’ve got her room, you know.’

‘No,’ Fern said baldly. ‘There isn’t. As far as we know, she was a fluttery young girl who became a fluttery old woman, with nothing much in between. The only definite information we have is that she made seed cake which tasted of sand.’

‘She must have had a lover,’ Will speculated. ‘The family wouldn’t permit it, because he was too low class. They used to meet on the moor, like Heathcliff and Cathy only rather more restrained. He wrote bad poems for her – you’ll probably find one in your room – and she pressed the wild flower he gave her in her prayer book. That’ll be around somewhere too. One day they were separated in a mist, she called and called to him but he did not come – he strayed too far, went over a cliff and was lost.’

‘Taken by boggarts,’ Fern suggested.

‘So she never married,’ Will concluded, ‘but spent the next eighty years gradually pining away. Her sad spectre still haunts the upper storey, searching for whichever book it was in which she pressed that bloody flower.’

Gaynor laughed. She had been meaning to ask about Alison again, but Will’s fancy diverted her, and it slipped her mind.

It was gone midnight when they went up to bed. Gaynor slept unevenly, troubled by the country quiet, listening in her waking moments to the rumour of the wind on its way to the sea and the hooting of an owl somewhere nearby. The owl-cry invaded her dreams, filling them with the noiseless flight of pale wings and the glimpse of a sad ghost-face looming briefly out of the dark. She awoke before dawn, hearing the gentleness of rain on roof and window-pane. Perhaps she was still half dreaming, but it seemed to her that her window stood high in a castle wall, and outside the rain was falling softly into the dim waters of a loch, and faint and far away someone was playing the bagpipes.

In her room on the floor below, Fern too had heard the owl. Its eerie call drew her back from that fatal world on the other side of sleep, the world that was always waiting for her when she let go of mind and memory, leaving her spirit to roam where it would. In London she worked too hard to think and slept too deep to dream, filling the intervals of her leisure with a busy social life and the thousand distractions of the metropolis; but here on the edge of the moor there was no job, few distractions, and something in her stirred that would not be suppressed. It was here that it had all started, nearly twelve years ago. Sleep was the gateway, dream the key. She remembered a stair, a stair in a picture, and climbing the stair as it wound its way from Nowhere into Somewhere, and the tiny bright vista far ahead of a city where even the dust was golden. And then it was too late, and she was ensnared in the dream, and she could smell the heat and taste the dust and the beat of her heart was the boom of the temple-drums and the roar of the waves on the shore. ‘I must go back!’ she cried out, trapped and desperate, but there was only one way back and her guide would not come. Never again. She had forfeited his affection, for he was of those who love jealously and will not share. Nevermore the cool smoothness of his cloud-patterned flank, nevermore the deadly lustre of his horn. She ran along the empty sands looking for the sea, and then the beach turned from gold to silver and the stars crisped into foam about her feet, and she was a creature with no name to bind her and no flesh to weigh her down, the spirit that breathes in every creation and at the nucleus of all being. An emotion flowed into her that was as vivid as excitement and as deep as peace. She wanted to hold on to that moment forever, but there was a voice calling, calling her without words, dragging her back into her body and her bed, until at last she knew she was lying in the dark, and the owl’s hoot was a cry of loneliness and pain for all that she had lost.

An hour or so later she got up, took two aspirin (she would not use sleeping pills), tried to read for a while. It was a long, long time before exhaustion mastered her, and she slipped into oblivion.

Will slumbered undisturbed, accustomed to the nocturnal smalltalk of his non-human neighbours. When the bagpipes began, he merely rolled over, smiling in his sleep.

The next day was spent mostly on wedding preparations. The girls having brought the Dress with them, Mrs Wicklow exercised her royal prerogative and took charge of it, relegating Trisha to the sidelines, personally pressing it into creaseless perfection and arraying it in state in one of the spare bedrooms. Will had unearthed a rather decrepit tailor’s dummy from the attic, formerly the property of a long-deceased Miss Capel, and they hung the Dress on it, arranging the train in a classic swirl on the carpet, tweaking the empty sleeves into place. He even stuck a knitting-needle in the vacancy of the neck and suspended the veil from its point, draping it in misty folds that fell almost to the floor. Fern found something oddly disquieting in that faceless, limbless shell of a bride; she even wondered if Will was trying to make a subtle point, but he was so helpful, so pleased with his and Mrs Wicklow’s handiwork, that she was forced to acquit him of deviousness. It was left to Gaynor to offer comment. ‘It looks very beautiful,’ she said. ‘It’ll walk down the aisle all by itself.’

‘Up the aisle,’ said Fern. ‘It’s up.’

They met the vicar, Gus Dinsdale, in the church that afternoon and retired to the vicarage for tea. Gus in his forties looked very much as he had in his thirties, save that his hair was receding out of existence and his somewhat boyish expression had been vividly caricatured by usage and time. On learning that Gaynor’s work was researching and restoring old books and manuscripts he begged to show her some of his acquisitions, and when Will and Fern left he took her into his study. Gaynor duly admired the books, but her mind was elsewhere. She hovered on the verge of asking questions but drew back, afraid of appearing vulgarly inquisitive, a busybody prying into the affairs of her friend. And then, on their return to the drawing room, chance offered her an opening. ‘You have lovely hair, dear,’ Gus’ wife Maggie remarked. ‘I haven’t seen hair that long since Alison – and I was never sure hers was natural. Of course, I don’t think they had extensions in those days, but –’

‘Alison?’ Gaynor nearly jumped. ‘Will mentioned her. So did Fern. Who was she?’

‘She was a friend of Robin’s,’ Maggie replied. ‘She stayed at Dale House for a while, more than a decade ago now. We didn’t like her very much.’

‘You didn’t like her,’ Gus corrected, smiling faintly. ‘She was a very glamorous young woman. Not all that young really, and not at all beautiful, but … well, she had It. As they say.’

‘She looked like a succubus,’ Maggie said.

‘You’ve never seen a succubus.’

‘Maybe not,’ Maggie retorted with spirit, ‘but I’d know one if I did. It would look like Alison.’

‘My wife is prejudiced,’ Gus said. ‘Alison wasn’t the kind of woman to be popular with her own sex. Alison Redmond, that was her full name. Still, we shouldn’t speak harshly of her. Her death was a terrible tragedy. Fern was completely overset by it.’

‘She died?’

‘Didn’t you know?’ Gus sighed. ‘She drowned. Some kind of freak flood, but no one ever really knew how it happened. Fern was saved, caught on a tree, but Alison was swept away. They found her in the river. Dreadful business. I’ve always wondered –’ He broke off, shaking his head as if to disperse an invisible cobweb. Gaynor regarded him expectantly.

‘There was that story she told us,’ said Maggie. ‘I know it was nonsense, but it’s not as if she was a habitual liar. She must have been suffering from some kind of post-traumatic shock. That’s what the doctors said about her illness later on, wasn’t it?’ She turned to Gaynor. ‘But you’re her best friend; you must know more about that than we do.’

What illness? The query leapt to Gaynor’s lips, but she suppressed it. Instead she said – with a grimace at her conscience for the half-truth – ‘Fern doesn’t discuss it much.’

‘Oh dear.’ Now it was Maggie’s turn to sigh. ‘That isn’t good, is it? You’re supposed to talk through your problems: it’s essential therapy.’

‘That’s the theory, anyway,’ said Gus. ‘I’m not entirely convinced by it. Not in this case, anyway. There was one thing that really bothered me about that explanation of Fern’s.’

‘What was that?’ asked Maggie.

‘Nobody ever came up with a better one.’

Gaynor walked back to Dale House very slowly, lost in a whirl of thought. She had refrained from asking further questions, reluctant to betray the extent of her ignorance and still wary of showing excessive curiosity. Fern had never spoken of any illness, and although there was no particular reason why she should have done, the omission, coupled with her distaste for Yorkshire, was beginning to take on an unexplained significance. If this were a Gothic novel, Gaynor reflected fancifully, say, a Daphne du Maurier, Fern would probably have murdered Alison Redmond. But that’s ridiculous. Fern’s a very moral person, she’s totally against capital punishment – and anyway, how could you arrange a freak flood? It ought to be impossible in an area like this, even for Nature. I have to ask her about it. She’s my best friend. I should be able to ask her anything …

But somehow, when she reached the house and found Fern in the kitchen preparing supper, hindered rather than helped by Mrs Wicklow’s assertion of culinary by-laws, she couldn’t. She decided it was not the right moment. Will took her into the studio drawing-room, retrieved a bottle of wine from the same shelf as the white spirit, and poured some into a couple of bleared glasses. Bravely, Gaynor drank. ‘Are you going to show me your paintings?’ she enquired.

‘You won’t understand them,’ he warned her. ‘Which is a euphemism for “you won’t like them”.’

‘Let me see,’ said Gaynor.

In fact, he was right. They were complex compositions in various styles: superficial abstractions where a subliminal image lurked just beyond the borders of realisation, or representational scenes – landscapes and figures – distorted into abstract concepts. A darkness permeated them, part menace, part fantasy. There were occasional excursions into sensuality – a half-formed nude, a flower moulded into lips, kissing or sucking – but overall there was nothing she could connect with the little she knew or guessed of Will. The execution was inconsistent: some had a smooth finish almost equal to the gloss of airbrushing, others showed caked oils and the scrapings of a knife. Evidently the artist was still at the experimental stage. She found them fascinating, vaguely horrible, slightly immature. ‘I don’t like them,’ she admitted, ‘in the sense that they’re uncomfortable, disturbing: I couldn’t live with them. They’d give me nightmares. And I don’t understand them because they don’t seem to me to come from you. Unless you have a dark side – a very dark side – which you never let anyone see.’