Grace grew up accustomed to her mother’s sudden bouts of melancholy. She would hide in the corridor and watch her through the crack in the door or if it was closed, through the keyhole. She loved to observe her solitary dancing. There was something dark and alluring about the secrecy of it for she would go to great lengths to check that she was alone, and the romance of it touched her very deeply, for her mother often cried as she danced and her tears were mysterious, for as much as Grace tried to ask her spirit friends about the cause of such unhappiness they were not forthcoming with an answer.
Audrey didn’t know she was being watched and she didn’t realize how much of an impression her dancing had on her small child. Grace never asked her why she danced because she knew that if she admitted she had witnessed it her mother would stop dancing altogether and instinctively she knew she had to dance. It was a matter of survival.
But the most fascinating of all was the little silk-bound book that her mother kept hidden in her underwear drawer. When she took it out and opened it, her pen poised above the page, Grace would strain her eyes to read what she wrote there. Her mother’s face would turn pale and her eyes would often glisten like they did during her dance of tears. She would sit thinking for a long while and Grace would watch her until she could barely contain her curiosity.
Then one day, while her mother was out and Mercedes was baking a cake in the kitchen, she crept into her bedroom and opened the drawer which contained the secret book. There it lay beneath satin camisoles and stockings. With trembling fingers Grace picked it up. She felt at once the heavy vibrations of sadness and disappointment that clung to it and sent her own spirit spiralling into a decline. She breathed deeply and tried to detach herself; sometimes her gift ran away with itself. It was an exquisite little book. The silk was luxurious reds and greens woven into pictures of blue flowers and shone in the light like the hair of angels. It was soft to the touch and bound with a green cord that was knotted at the ends before spraying out into silky tassels. She sat down on the window seat and slowly untied it. For a moment she almost lost her courage. She knew she shouldn’t be prying into her mother’s private world. If she had wanted Grace to see the book she would have shown her herself. But her curiosity spurred her on. She opened it to find that the first page contained a strange title that she was unable to comprehend. ‘The Forget-Me-Not Sonata.’ She frowned and stared at the words written neatly in her mother’s hand, but they still meant nothing to her. Of course she knew that a forget-me-not was a flower and the flowers woven into the silk on the cover of the book could well have been forget-me-nots. But she instinctively felt there was a deeper significance that was hidden from her. She turned the page, hoping that the following words would enlighten her, but all she saw were the dots where her mother had attempted various times to start a sentence and a smudge from a tear. She sighed in disappointment and turned back to the peculiar title. ‘The Forget-Me-Not Sonata,’ she read. What did it mean?
PART THREE
Chapter 27
England
1971
Florien sat beneath one of the apple trees in the orchard, watching the evening sun bathe the top of the wall with bright golden light. The rumble of the combines in the distance was carried on the wind bringing with it the smell of smouldering fields and decaying foliage and the pale watery sky reminded him of winter and the colourless months to come. He chose an apple out of the basket beside him, full of the fruits he had picked for Mrs Weatherby’s larder, and bit into it. His father always said that the apples already nibbled by wasps and bees were the best of all and he was right, for this apple tasted sweeter than any he had ever eaten and it was riddled with little holes from hungry insects. His mind wandered lazily to Leonora and Alicia Forrester.
Leonora had helped him all day. He liked her. She was now a somewhat buxom seventeen year old with a small waist and large swollen breasts and bottom. Her face had lost some of its plainness and now began to reflect her gentle nature in a wide, disarming smile and soft blue eyes. She didn’t seem to care very much how she looked. She tied her brown hair into a ponytail and hid her figure beneath loose shirts and jumpers, preferring to dirty her hands in the mud of the garden than waste time applying makeup and painting her nails. He could talk to Leonora. She was kind and sympathetic. He could tell she admired him. He saw it in her shiny eyes and in her cheeks that blushed easily. Alicia was entirely different. It was she who now dominated his thoughts night and day. With the allure of the devil she enchanted him with her mocking grin and sharp wit, putting him down one moment, encouraging him the next so that he didn’t know what to make of her.