Chapter Six
And in the moonlight,
And in the starlight,
I listened.
Sarah’s next appearance wasn’t due for another twenty six days, when the next full moon was due. I can’t say that I just put it out of my mind. That would’ve been impossible. The whole thing kept on playing in the back of my head. Questions without answers, over and over again, like the notes of the piano, always seeking resolution and never finding it. Still, I got on with my life. I did my study and I worked a bit on the farm. I pruned the fruit trees and tried to bring some order to the garden, so that a walk there became less and less like an expedition to a wild, jungle wilderness. I still chatted to my old city friends on social media, although we now had less and less in common and I’m afraid I grossed them out with a few of the details of farm life that I probably should’ve kept to myself. I wondered what their reaction would’ve been if I’d mentioned Sarah.
I sat my Physics exam in the kitchen one Thursday. It was okay, neither as simple as I had hoped nor as difficult as I had feared. Like a lot of my exams, it was somewhere in the middle. Florence was convinced, and said so loudly and repeatedly, that I could’ve done much better if only I would stop thinking about Sarah and concentrate on my school. Maybe she was right. We’ll never know because that, of course, was impossible.
I still thought a lot about my parents too. Sometimes, the familiar sadness would just overwhelm me, like a wave. It could be anytime, day or night. I could be doing anything, from studying French verbs to herding sheep, and some memory would pop into my head, apparently out of nowhere. Then it would all be back again and I would be crying openly and wanting to scream my anger at heaven.
The dark despair of the early days was gone, though. Because of Sarah, I now knew that death wasn’t the end. Rather, it was the beginning of something else, something new; or at least it was meant to be. I was also pretty sure that my parents wouldn’t get themselves stuck like Sarah. They were both good people and way too sensible. I also knew they would trust me enough to let me get on with my own life.
Getting on with life suddenly became a very full occupation. Not only did I have a rolling schedule of exams, but now it was also lambing season and the music of Sarah’s piano was replaced by the bleating of the ewes as they gave birth. Lambing was a busy and fascinating time, although, if I were to be honest, I found some of the things we had to do disgusting, especially when a lamb got stuck. When I say we, I mean mostly Mr. Brown, although I did sometimes have to hold the sheep’s head while he did what had to be done at the other end. Good and necessary work, but disgusting none the less.
It was during one of these sessions with a troublesome ewe that I again asked Mr. Brown why he never came up to the house.
“I told you, too many ghosts,” he grunted as the lamb finally slipped out and fell to the ground.
“You mean Sarah?” I asked.
“Well, I’m not on first name terms, myself,” he answered. “but yes, her.” The lamb and the ewe were now bleating to each other and the lamb was already struggling to stand on shaking legs. I let go of the ewe’s head as she turned to tend the lamb.
Mr. Brown was taking no notice of the lamb. He was looking at me and frowning. “I’ve heard people say she was pretty and I’s guess her shade is also but boy, you listen to me. The girl is dead and gone. Whatever you might see up at the house, it isn’t a girl. It’s something unnatural. It’s something dangerous…”
“How?” I asked. “How can a ghost hurt anyone? They’re not material –“
“It’s not your body they hurt,” he interrupted. “It’s your soul. That’s what they’re after. They want to take your soul and leave you trapped in the darkness.”
I snorted in disgust. “That’s just silly,” I said. “Why would a girl like Sarah want my soul?”
“It’s not a girl!” he said loudly and angrily. “Whatever it once was, whoever it once was, it’s not that now. It’s a ghost and it’s nothing any living person should have any truck with.”
“Have you ever even seen her?” I yelled back.
“No,” he yelled. The he calmed down and answered softly, “but I heard her once. Let me tell you, I dropped everything, bolted back to the truck, and high tailed it outta there. Never been back after dark since. You’d do well to do the same. Don’t you have friends in the city?” He stalked back to his truck and I followed. I never mentioned the subject with him again.
I didn’t buy any of that ghosts steal your soul stuff, although I’d be lying if I said that the thought didn’t nag at me a little, especially when I remembered that feeling I had when looking into her eyes. I didn’t dwell on it though. I deliberately turned away and busied myself with task. It was a thought and a memory that I didn’t want to have.
I took some time that month to clean up the drawing room, I even polished the silver. I washed down the windows and I vacuumed and dusted the reading room. I had to use a small battery unit since there were no power points in that part of the house. I don’t know why I did this. I wasn’t even sure that Sarah perceived the modern house rather than the one she had died in. Still, it felt like I was doing something for her and perhaps the gesture, if not the thing itself, would ease her sorrow. That was what I wanted to do now. To ease Sarah’s sorrow. The more I thought about it, the more unjust it seemed that she should be stuck, doing the same sad things, over and over and over again. More and more, I wanted to help her.
Cleaned up, both rooms were changed into bright, pleasant places, with the morning sun streaming through the windows and a view across the spring garden to the sea. Florence tolerated my cleaning activities but started to make pointed remarks about me, maybe, tidying up my own room which, I have to admit, was a bit of a mess.
As often happens when you’re busy, the month passed quickly. Towards the end, Florence kept loading me with jobs that needed, at least in her mind, to be done immediately. I think…No, I know, that she was trying to distract me from Sarah’s imminent return. It didn’t work.
A change came through the next day and we were buffeted by strong southerly winds which brought with them squally showers. That evening, clouds covered the rising moon and the showers had given way to rain. I didn’t go down to the beach but waited in the drawing room, unsure of whether Sarah would turn up, given that the moon was obscured. I was not unprepared, however. I brought in some candles and lit them rather than wait in the dark and I also set my phone to record and left it on the piano. I wanted a recording of Sarah and her music.
I waited for what seemed like a long time. Then the piano started to play. At first, apparently, by itself. Then Sarah seemed to condense from the dark, seated at the piano. The strange thing was, even given that really everything at that moment was strange, she still looked as though she was bathed in bright moonlight. She seemed to shine in the candlelit room. I didn’t make a noise. I just sat there and listened. I let her music and her sadness wash over me and through me, acting like a balm to my own grief. I seemed to find a resonance there, as if, in my pain, I was not alone. Misery loves company, I guess. I sat and I listened, until the music stopped and her bright moonlight figure ran to the reading room. I followed. Again, stopping at the doorway and sitting on the step.
She was sitting in her chair and again reading her poetry, her moonlight bright figure the only effective illumination in the darkened room.
She looked up at me and asked, “Only sitting?” I nodded and she said, “Thank you,” so softly that it might have been nothing more than a breath of wind. Her eyes turned back to her book and I couldn’t help but wonder if, after a hundred and fifty odd years, she wouldn’t be sick of it by now.
Apparently not. Because, as she was starting to fade, she looked directly at me and said:
“What can I give thee back, O liberal
And princely giver, who hast brought the gold
And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold
And laid them on the….”
/> She faded into the darkness, still speaking. I found out later that these were the first lines from sonnet number eight of Elizabeth Browning’s ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’. I guess that after a hundred and fifty years, while you might be sick of the poems, you would sure have them memorised pretty well.
I went back into the drawing room, retrieved my phone and checked the recording. There was nothing on it. The video just showed the empty room until I crossed over to the reading room. There was no sound other than my footsteps. I played it again and amped up the volume and still there was nothing except the soft sound of the wind around the house, my own breathing, and the distant sound of the surf breaking on the reef. Of Sarah’s music there was no trace. Again, I scanned forward until I heard the sound of my footsteps going to the reading room. Still, of Sarah there was no trace. This left me with a lot to think about. How could I see her if the camera couldn’t record her? How could I hear the music if my phone couldn’t record it? Did I really see her or hear the music or was it some sort of impression in my brain? Was she real or only in my mind? Was it even really music?
I shook my head and put all this to one side. It was too much to worry about tonight. I put out the candles and made my way back through the darkened house. I found Florence waiting for me in the kitchen. She was clearly not pleased.
“Give it up, John,” she said, her voice as sharp as steel. “Leave the dead with the dead. Don’t waste your life chasing after shadows and moonlight.”
“She needs help,” I said stubbornly.
“And how are you going to give it to her?” she replied. “What can you offer her that could set her free? What sort of relationship can you have with someone who died before your great grandfather was born?” She looked at me as if demanding an answer but I made no reply. She snorted in disgust. “It was a mistake to bring you here. You should be with people your own age – living people your own age. I’ve let you wallow in grief long enough. Pull yourself together or I’ll have to make other arrangements.” That didn’t sound good but I had too much going on to process it tonight, let alone argue about it.
“Okay,” I said. “Goodnight, Florence. See you in the morning.” I went to my room and fell into bed and into dreams; dreams full of music that only I could hear and cries for help that I couldn’t answer.
The next day I made myself busy around the farm and the garden, despite the persistent showers, and kept out of the way of Florence, except at meals. The subject of Sarah was not raised between us. That evening I again waited in the drawing room and sat and listened as Sarah played; grief calling to grief, tears to tears. When she had finished, I went over to the reading room and sat on the doorstep, as I had the night before.
She looked up at me and was silent for a while. Then she finished the sonnet she had started the night before.
“Ask God who knows, for frequent tears have run
The colours from my life, and left so dead
And pale a stuff, its use not fitly done
To give the same a pillow to thy head.
Go Farther! Let it serve to trample on.”
She was silent when she had finished, looking down and apparently reading her book again. Then she looked up and looked directly at me. I felt the same unsettling shock as I looked into her eyes.
“Go on, John Riley,” she said. “Go and live your life, find the one you love. Don’t get tangled in the darkness with me.” Then she faded and was gone.