Maestro Page 7

"Would you like a liqueur to go with that?" he inquired, always the perfect host.

  "Thank you, just coffee will be fine."

  Gillane filled a glass with Grand Marnier, placing it alongside his cup of coffee.

  "That was truly a lovely meal. It was very kind of you to invite me over for dinner."

  Gillane had already finished drinking his coffee and was lighting a cigarette.

  "Is there anything else I can get you, Sara?"

  Sara shook her head vigorously.

  "I would like to hear more about you. In my head, I can't quite reconcile...," she regretted giving herself away so easily and continued, "you hardly say anything about yourself or your past..."

  "Is that so unusual?" Gillane shot back, his eyes blazing at her. "I don't know very much about you."

  Sara interpreted the tone of his voice and his reply to mean that she had been rude to ask for details of his personal life.

  "You're quite right," she replied curtly, "most people subsist on a diet of knowing very little about each other. Perhaps I will have a glass of that liqueur after all."

  Her triumph was short lived. The cloyingly sweet syrup Gillane handed her went straight to her head.

  Her head spinning, Sara rose uneasily from her chair.

  "Forgive me," she mumbled, "my curiosity has been getting the better of me. You're quite right. I should leave now..."

  "Please don't leave on my account, Sara. It’s raining heavily. You're quite welcome to stay until it subsides."

  Sara ignored him. She walked around the room distractedly, frantic to find her handbag and get out. She found it and her legs gave way under her. She fell backwards onto a chair, her head throbbing. She was afraid she would be sick.

  She began to cry.

  "What's the point! What's the point! It’s hopeless..."

  Gillane came and sat next to her.

  "What's hopeless Sara? What's so hopeless?" he whispered, his hand caressing her back.

  Sara could not reply. She didn't know where to begin. She wanted to lie down. To go to sleep forever.

  "Do you want some more coffee? I'll go and get some."

  Sara lay back in the chair, weeping. She was cold. Tired.

  Gillane returned with the coffee and handed her a cup. She took a sip and gave the cup back to him, a lump in her throat prevented her from drinking any more.

  Gillane sat with her, his arm around her shoulder. Sara leaned her head against him and he drew his arm around her tighter.

  The tears were rolling down her face. She wiped them away furiously but her hands could not stem the veritable river pouring out of her.

  Gillane placed his hand under her chin and drew her towards him. His lips touched hers gently then he kissed her forehead.

  "You mustn't cry, Sara. You mustn't cry," he murmured, his lips still on her forehead.

  He moved away and pulled her to her feet.

  "You need to get some sleep."

  He slipped his arm around her waist, supporting her.

  "Give me your car keys. I'll take you home."

  Too weary to resist, Sara surrendered the keys.

  The rain had abated into a fine drizzle.

  Standing in the doorway, Sara leaned against Gillane, his arms firmly around her.

  The lights above the doorway, shone into the darkness outside, the mist circled around them, the silence of the night, the stillness of time. Sara wanted it to last forever. One moment in her life when all there is, is exactly as it should be.

  Gillane drove her back to the cottage and carried her inside. He lay her on the bed and stroked her face.

  "I'll bring your car back in the morning. Do you feel any better now?"

  "Thank you. Yes..."

  "See you in the morning, Sara. Sleep well."

  Sara heard him let himself out and drive away.

  *****************

  The little robin was chirping noisily from his perch on the windowsill.

  Her eyes blinking open sleepily, Sara chided the robin playfully.

  "Hey you...Mr. Robin! Some of us are trying to sleep!"

  The robin cackled back at her that she should get out of bed.

  Indeed, it was already ten o'clock.

  Sara leaped out of bed. Surprised at feeling so refreshed, she decided to thank the robin personally.

  She opened the wooden shutters and found the robin winking back at her gaily.

  "You really are very sweet," she said smiling at her little friend. "Would you like to come and live with me in London?"

  The robin tilted his head from side to side, pushed out his small wings and flew off.

  "I guess that's no," thought Sara, closing the window.

  She peeled off the cotton dress she was still wearing from the night before. Waiting for the bath to fill, she removed her makeup. Her face was drawn and pale without it.

  She lay in the bath thinking about Gillane and her strange reaction to him. The gentle way that he had treated her. As if he had also felt pain in his own life.

  Sara was just finishing breakfast when she heard a car arrive.

  Still only in her dressing gown, she opened the door. Gillane walked towards her holding out the car keys.

  "Hello, Sara. You look much brighter this morning."

  "Much better, thank you," Sara replied, taking the keys from him. "Can I offer you a cup of coffee?"

  "That would be nice."

  Gillane followed her into the kitchen. Sara made a fresh pot of coffee while Gillane sat down at the table and lit a cigarette.

  "It’s a lovely day, don't you think?" she said pouring out the coffee, "Very different to last night's stormy weather..."

  "The weather in Britain changes without giving notice," Gillane responded cryptically.

  Sara sat down sipping her coffee.

  "Look I must apologise for last night," she began, "sometimes I feel overwhelmed. Well, not often, but I do."

  Gillane shrugged his shoulders and gave her a conciliatory glance.

  She could tell that he had retreated into his silent, closed mode. Any intimacy that they had shared the night before had gone.

  "Did I tell you that I saw a man here one morning, lurking over there," she continued, pointing towards the window.

  "Where? At the window?" Gillane seemed only mildly concerned.

  "No at the back of the garden. I thought it was you."

  "I can assure you that I would knock on the front door if I wanted to see you." Gillane replied, his tone giving away his annoyance.

  He finished his coffee quickly and got up to leave.

  "I must leave you now, Sara. I've got some errands to do."

  Sara concealed her disappointment. Gillane's indifference made her feel a fool.

  "I...I never asked about the cut on your head. Did it...heal well?"

  Gillane had already made his way to the front door but turned to answer her.

  "Yes. I heal well."

  Sara noticed that the half smile on his face looked more like a grimace. She had succeeded in distracting him only briefly.

  Gillane walked through the front door and shut it firmly behind him.

  Chapter Ten.

  As soon as Gillane had left, Sara changed out of her dressing gown. She discarded the cotton dress she had worn to dinner, throwing it into a heap on the floor.

  Now more than ever determined to unlock the secrets of the cellar and Gillane, she drove into Goldarn.

  She parked the car in the busy square and looked over towards the police station and the Town Hall. Neither the Inspector Jay nor the microfiches the gnome had permitted her to see had yielded any real information.

  Sara crossed the square as if she were possessed. Her heart throbbing in her chest, she raced from shop to shop. Finally, she stopped at what looked like a general store.

  The store clerk had some difficulty in understanding what she was asking for.

  "A torchlight. One that you hold in your hands. It works on batteries,
" she explained.

  The clerk drew a box slowly from under the counter.

  "There you are. A lamp. Is it that then?" he asked triumphantly, placing the box on the counter.

  Effectively, and at long last, he had gotten it right. Sara removed the torchlight from the box and found that it wouldn't switch on.

  "Do you have any batteries?"

  The clerk scratched his head.

  "Batteries? Nar. You'll have to go to the chemist...."

  "All right. All right. I'll take it the way it is. How much?"

  Turning the box over and over, the clerk searched for the price.

  "Eight pound, then."

  Sara handed him a ten-pound note and tapped her foot impatiently while she waited for the change.

  Next stop was the chemist, in the same league as the general store. Sara had to endure more fumbling. They only had two batteries remaining in the required size but they weren't in a box.

  The butter-balled face girl behind the counter offered to go to the back and see if they had any more.

  She returned several minutes later and announced that there were none. Could Madam come back in a week when the new stocks would be arriving?

  "Just let me have those! I can't wait!" Sara exploded.

  The butterball's face turned bright beetroot.

  "Hold on while I get the price," she said unwillingly.

  She pulled a drawer out from under the counter and began to rummage through a stack of papers, which for all intents and purposes, was probably the shop inventory.

  "Two pound ten," she informed Sara, then at the top of her voice, she shouted: "Pat! Pat! D'yar think two batteries is two pound ten?!"

  Pat shouted back "Ach!" and shrugged his shoulders.

  Sara did not dispute the cost. She paid for the batteries and left the shop muttering to herself about how much of a big deal everything was in this part of the world.

  During the drive back to Downswold, Sara realised that another storm was imminent. The blue sky from earlier that morning had been invaded by threatening, black clouds. She would be forced to spend the rest of the day indoors.

  As she looked at the clouds gaining momentum over Glymeer, Sara estimated that it would not start raining for another couple of hours. If that were the case, then the rain would continue well into the evening, maybe even through the night.

  A repeat of the previous night. But this time she would be alone. Without Gillane.

  Gillane had his reasons: obviously he had felt obliged to extend his hospitality to Sara but the experience had left him at odds with her.

  His behaviour that morning had reminded her of Carl. Carl, whom she concluded, was a master of feigning interest whilst all the while staying completely detached. From her. Nothing he did in his life was connected to hers.

  Gillane had treated her in the same way. They had spent an evening together over a meal because she happened to be there. It was not the first time in her life that a man had treated her with such blatant indifference.

  Sara turned the car onto the path leading to Downswold.

  The same feeling of melancholy that had reduced her to tears in Gillane's presence, overcame her yet again.

  Whereas a day or two earlier, she might have been able to laugh at the ridiculousness of her situation, any chance of laughter had now gone. For good.

  It had been replaced with a foreboding that this was her life. Pursuing things that were not there.

  Her search for Sarah had become a metaphor for her own existence. It confirmed what she had already known for a long time: that outside of the bright lights of the Maestro and his world, there was nothing for her. No enduring love, no belief that she held passionately in her heart.

  She got out of the car wearily and looked up at the sky. Yes, there was a storm coming.

  She decided to sit for a few minutes on the bench. It struck her that Downswold would not survive too many more storms. All it would take would be a violent strapping wind to reduce the cottage to sticks and stones. And bones.

  ************************

  The next morning, Sara sat behind the wheel of her car about to start the engine.

  She bent over to the passenger seat, tracing her finger along the map route that would get her to Wales.

  The storm had broken at minutes to four in the afternoon. She had fallen asleep on the bench, after returning from Goldarn. Lightning and thunder collided to release the rain which came flooding down on Sara's sleeping body. She fell off the bench. Still half asleep and in danger of losing her life, she had managed to crawl into the cottage.

  As expected, the storm continued into the night. The rain lashed down, the wind howled, the thunder roared with such ferocity that Sara had found it impossible to sleep.

  At around 3.00 am, she gave up the battle for sleep and went to sit in the kitchen. She waited out the storm smoking cigarettes.

  It was on her tenth or eleventh cigarette that she heard it. The silence that follows a storm, where anything that has not succumbed, begins to stir.

  She walked into the bedroom, pushed open the window and peered cautiously outside. Dawn had already broken; she could see the sunlight glistening faintly down the pathway to the house.

  Her car was thankfully still in one piece although amply covered in twigs and leaves. One of the roses bushes from the stone island had been uprooted and lay mournfully on its head.

  Sara stood at the window staring at it, wondering if it could be saved. She thought of going out right away and replanting it but changed her mind. It was too early in the day to be making decisions.

  The little robin did not appear. Sara worried that he might be dead, blown to bits by the fiery storm.

  Mourning her little friend, she began to recite a poem which she had memorised as a child:

  "They shall not grow old, as we are left, grow old, Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn, At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them." (Laurence Binyon, For the Fallen)

  A remembrance for fallen soldiers, it was one of the most beautiful poems, Sara had ever read.

  Her mind turned to Sarah Lunn. And Sarah’s parents living in Wales. Did they remember?

  Sara showered and dressed. She would leave for Wales straight away.

  She made herself a pot of strong coffee. The combination of too many cigarettes and no sleep made her feel nauseous. A taste of burnt wood shavings in her mouth, she attempted a bite out of her toast. Nothing doing. She began to wretch. The only thing that would go down was the coffee and another cigarette.

  The newly bought torch was still in its box. She opened one of the kitchen drawers and slipped it inside. She didn't want to look at it.

  She found the address in Wales given to her by John. Angels Rest. A place for angels to lie in peace. A beautiful thought.

  She would go. Just go, even if it were to be a wasted journey.

  "Like everything else in my life. Wasted," she thought.

  She wanted to scream it out loud.

  In the bedroom, she filled her travel bag mechanically. She could be gone for days. She might get lost and need to find somewhere to spend the night.

  On her way out of the cottage, she checked that all the windows were locked and the lights out.

  If Gillane came round, she would not be there. She too, would have vanished.

  Mag might agree to come with her. Sara thought seriously of stopping to ask Mag if she would like to accompany her. If she would want to see her sister after all these years. Sara decided that she had no right to be meddling with the choices Mag made. That decision was one that Mag should make on her own. In her own time.

  As Sara opened the front door, she was confronted by the overturned rose bush. She had forgotten of her intention to replant it.

  As she drove away from Downswold and the rose standing on its head, she doubted that it could even be saved.

  *****************

  Sara drove swiftly down the main street
in Glymeer.

  The street was deserted except for a white van parked outside the post office. A young lad was dropping off bundles of newspapers and paused from his task to look up at Sara briefly.

  Further down the street, John was already hard at work stacking his crates into place. His back to the road, he didn't turn around when Sara passed.

  Sara looked into her rear view mirror as she drove on. Behind her, tiny little Glymeer with its single street, fitted neatly into the mirror. A perfect picture postcard.

  Suddenly, something in the postcard image moved. John was standing in the middle of the street, his hands on his hips, watching her. His ruddy face staring.

  The Meer Valley was particularly beautiful this morning, the golden rapeseed fluorescent against the green slopes. The sun was slowly rising, swallowing up the darkness around it.

  Sara opened the car windows to let in the sun, the air, the freshness of the morning.

  The winding valley road forced her to drive slowly. And of course, the thought of colliding with more sheep and their disagreeable owner.

  Sara fiddled with the car radio, momentarily losing sight of the road ahead. She didn't see what was coming.

  Instead of sheep, a man on a horse leaped across the road from one side of the valley to the next.

  Sara screamed at the sight of a ton of horse just inches from the bonnet of her car. The horse high-jumped clean across the full width of the road.

  Neither the rider nor the horse appeared to notice her and continued undisturbed onto the other side.

  Sara's memory returned to her. She pulled the car over and switched the engine off. The rider and his horse raced along over the hills. The sun was shining onto the rider's back. Once before, she had watched the sun on that man's back. She remembered how it had cast a long shadow as he walked away from her.

  The tall, athletic body, the long back, belonged to Gillane.

  Gillane the enigma.

  Sara had assumed he didn't ride. On the two occasions she had gone to his house, she hadn't noticed any stables. And there was that odd remark from Mag that he only kept pigs. As pets.

  The Inspector Jay had said that Gillane had the stables dismantled. That was what he was doing the day Sarah Lunn disappeared.

  Sara started the engine again. She thought to herself that it didn't seem unusual for a man to be out so early riding a horse. Gillane was capable of that and much more. It would have been ironic though, if they had collided - her car against his horse. Then he would not have been able to hide the darker side to his nature. Or was that too well hidden away?