work had weathered Davy Jones’s skin. His face was obscured by a long Viking beard that tapered to a point. Pale blue eyes smiled at them and lips, surprisingly full and childlike, grinned at Hilary and Tansy in turn as Geoff introduced them. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to meet you – I lost track of the time. John said you’d be here for twelve.”
Davy produced a keyring from his pocket.
“What castle dungeon did you get that from?” Hilary asked with a gasp.
Davy looked apologetic. “John likes the drama of it, I think – the old cellar door, this is, with a lock to match.”
“Isn’t John in?”
“Didn’t he tell you?” asked Davy Jones in surprise. “He left two days ago.”
“He what?”
“They changed the date of his cruise at the last minute. It was panic stations here, I can tell you! Didn’t he get in touch?”
“He did not!” groaned Geoff. “He was meant to be spending this week showing me the ropes. What am I going to do now?”
“I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it,” said Davy. “This was my uncle’s house – I more or less grew up in it, so I know what goes where. Don’t despair! We’ll sort things out between us.”
And very quickly he had found the massy key that opened the house, and he and Geoff were off on a tour of boilers, stopcocks and fuse boxes.
“Runes and druids,” commented Hilary ironically as their heads sank below the trapdoor to the cellar. “Come on, Tansy, we have a house to explore.”
“What about Uncle John? He can’t just have gone off like this, can he?” Tansy had been expecting a full-scale argument over the blunder and this calm of her mother’s was suspect.
“I hardly expected that any plan cooked up by John and your father would go smoothly. Look, here’s the master bedroom.”
Half an hour later Geoff returned, beaming. Tansy heard a door slam and the crunch of Davy Jones’s feet on the gravel.
“See what I mean?” Geoff began. “So much for the islanders being stand-offish. Salt of the earth, that man! He’s given me all kinds of help. Told me about feeding the Jacob’s sheep and the hens, where the account books are, everything.”
“Who is he exactly?” Tansy asked.
“Davy Jones? Calls himself the Nature Warden, but he’s really the island’s general handyman, I gather. None too bright, perhaps, but a heart of oak!”
“Then you’ve fallen on your feet again,” said Hilary.
“We’ve fallen on our feet,” Geoff pointed out.
Hilary shrugged. As Geoff pottered off, Tansy saw the set of her mother’s face, momentarily bleak and distant. She said gently, “Are you sorry you came?”
“Sorry?” said Hilary. “No! Why do you ask?”
“It’s just, you and Dad – you seem a bit … Well, you know how they said we had to break the cycle—”
“Not another word!” said Hilary, playfully putting her finger to Tansy’s lips. “For myself, I intend to have a wonderful time. I advise you to do the same.” And to Tansy’s wonder Hilary flung herself on to the big double bed like a child. It was beyond understanding. But when Hilary laughed Tansy found herself laughing too, and burrowed under the covers to chase her mother’s oh-so-ticklish feet. And they were giggling as they hadn’t done in years, since the time before Gloria.
The sun was shining on the dust motes thrown up by the bed. The motes spiralled up out of the window and outside Tansy could hear the swooping gulls and their chatter, and she thought: I am going to remember this moment always. Because everything is so simple and so perfect.
That was when Tansy truly believed it. She realised that until then she had never thought they would escape from Bristol and from all that Bristol now meant. Even the thought of the place had a sour taste. Her best friend Kate had been compiling a list of secret names, spells to be cast on the unsuspecting. She half-believed she was a witch. But Kate had been making bad friends lately and it came into Tansy’s head that she’d had a lucky escape.
A lucky escape. Yes, the phrase was a tempting one. Dad had escaped from Gloria and she had escaped from Kate. Lucky for them both.
“How do you like being marooned so far?” asked Hilary as she emerged, spluttering, from her cave of eiderdown.
“I love it,” Tansy said.
Who can say just when the warping of the world began? We are never free of miracles, of strange devotions, of cures that seem impossible. Our life is a nursery of wonder.
In the Caucasus an earthquake splits a mountain in two and reveals a hidden city carved from quartz. Its chairs and doorways are made for giants and the skeletons in the great sarcophagi, torqued and braceleted in gold, are more than seven feet long. An ancient man is discovered in an Appalachian valley, still in breeches and hose and talking, verily, in the speech of his fathers. On the high fells some say it is a lynx they have seen, lolloping through the bracken: some a leopard; others keep their counsel and will not venture beyond the town lights. All over the world sleeping powers begin to stir: old beliefs find willing minds to lodge in. Dabblers in magic are shocked to find their spells taking hold with a new and horrifying potency. Unheard-of diseases spring up, insidious and always deforming. As if in recompense, certain people discover gifts of healing in themselves: the Order of Asklepius is formed. But the Healers are few in number and their powers are not infallible. Even Dominic Fowey would admit as much.
Sitting in his converted ambulance, Dominic smiled. After the car with its inquisitive driver and lifetime of luggage had disappeared over the hill’s crest up to the moor, he had tried the ignition once again. The engine had cut in with insolent promptness. She’s playing with me, he thought to himself.
He eased the van back on to the road. Slowly, he chuttered uphill till the gradient flattened out and he saw the island’s one metalled road snaking westward to the Tor. On his right a drystone wall ran for some distance, beyond which he sensed the presence of buildings, farm machinery perhaps. And a distant roaring, not of the sea.
He had one picture of Sophie, taped to the inside of his sunshield. She was not with Calypso. That would have been dangerous for everyone, a hostage to fortune. He smiled again, this time at himself. How superstitious the last few years had made him! Or just careful, perhaps – hard to know.
Now the ambulance was on the open moor, thin soil with gorse and heather, and sheep gathered in the shelter of the outcrop rocks that broke like little waves over the copper earth. He had not expected the wind up here, but it came in sudden buffets, knocking his van to the edge of the roadside ditches. Not welcome, he thought. She doesn’t want me here at all. Ah, but she’s too young to understand.
Glancing in the mirror, he caught a glimpse of a young girl as she moved about the tiny kitchen behind him. A coffee jar was knocked
