Luca Comar stood at his bedroom window, looking out over the wolds as he’d done every morning at daybreak since . . . Well, every morning. There was a particularly thick mist covering the estate today. Beyond the lawns (unmown for weeks now, damn it), all he could see were the old cedars, great grey shadows guarding Cricklade’s orchards and pastures. Gravely reassuring in their size and familiarity.
It was completely still outside. A morning so insipid it couldn’t even coax native animals out of their burrows. Dewdrops cloaked every leaf, their weight bending branches out of alignment, making it seem as though every bush and tree was sagging from apathy.
“For heaven’s sake come back to bed,” Susannah grunted. “I’m cold.”
She was lying in the middle of their huge four poster bed, eyes closed, sleepily trawling the duvet back around her shoulders. Her dark hair fanned out across the rumpled pillows like a broken bird’s nest. Not as long as it used to be, he thought wistfully. The two of them getting together had been inevitable. Back together, in one respect. However you wanted to look at it, they were suited for each other. And there had been one argument too many with Lucy.
Luca went back and sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at his love. Her hand crept out from under the duvet, feeling round for him. He held it gently, and bent over to kiss her knuckles. A gesture that had carried over from their courting days. She smiled lazily.
“That’s better,” she purred. “I hate it when you leap out of bed every bloody morning.”
“I have to. The estate doesn’t run itself. Especially not now. Honestly, some of the buggers are more idle and stupid now than they were before.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Yes it does. We still have a crop to get in. Who knows how long this winter is going to last.”
She lifted her head and peered up at him in modest confusion. “It’ll last the same time as it always does. That’s what’s right for this world, and that’s what we all feel. So that’s the way it will be. Stop worrying.”
“Yeah.” He looked back at the window again. Tempted.
She sat up and gave him a proper look. “What is it? I can sense how troubled you are. It’s not just the crops.”
“It is, partly. You and I both know that I have to be here to make sure it’s done right. Not just because they’re a bunch of slackers. They need the kind of guidance Grant can give them. Which silos are used for what, how much drying the grain should be given first.”
“Mr Butterworth can tell them that.”
“Johan, you mean.”
They managed to avoid each other’s eye. But the mild guilt was the same in both of them. Identity was a taboo topic on Norfolk these days.
“He can tell them,” Luca said. “Whether they’ll listen and actually do the work is another matter. We’ve still got a way to go before we’re one big harmonious family working for the common good.”
She grinned. “Arses need to be kicked.”
“Damn right!”
“So what’s with all the angst?”
“Days like this give me time to think. They’re so slow. There’s no urgent farmwork to do at the moment, only the pruning. And Johan can supervise that okay.”
“Ah.” She drew her knees up under her chin, and hugged them. “The girls.”
“Yeah,” he admitted sheepishly. “The girls. I hate it, you know. It means I’m more of Grant than I am of me. That I’m losing control. That can’t be right. I’m Luca; and they’re nothing to me, they’re nothing to do with me.”
“Me neither,” she said miserably. “But I think we’re fighting an instinct we can never beat. They’re the daughters of this body, Luca. And the more I settle into this body, the more it belongs to me, then the more I have to accept what comes with it. What Marjorie Kavanagh is. If I don’t, she’ll haunt me forever; and rightly so. This is supposed to be our haven. How can it be if we reject them? We will never be given peace.”
“Grant hates me. If he could put a gun to my head right now, he’d do it. Sometimes, when I’m more him than me, I think I’m going to do it. The only reason I’m still here is because he’s not ready to commit suicide yet. He desperately wants to know what’s happened to Louise and Genevieve. He wants that so bad that I do too, now. That’s why today is so tempting. I could take a horse and ride over to Knossington, there’s another aeroambulance stationed there. If it still works I could be in Norwich by evening.”
“I doubt any kind of plane would work, not here.”
“I know. Getting to Norwich by boat is going to be a hell of a lot more difficult. And then winter will make it damn near impossible. So I ought to start now.”
“But Cricklade won’t let you.”
“No. I don’t think so. I’m not sure anymore. He’s getting stronger, wearing me down.” He gave a short bitter laugh. “Taste the irony in that. The person I possess, possessing me in return. No more than I deserve, I suppose. And you know what? I do want to see that the girls are okay. Me, my own thoughts. I don’t know where that comes from. If it’s the guilt from what I tried to do to Louise, or if it is him, his first victory. Carmitha says we’re reverting. I think she could be right.”
“No she’s not, we will always be ourselves.”
“Will we?”
“Yes,” she said emphatically.
“I wish I could believe that. So much of this place isn’t what we expected. All I ever truly wanted was to be free of the beyond. Now I am, and I’m still being persecuted. Dear God, why can’t death be real? What kind of universe is this?”
“Luca, if you do go looking for the girls, I’m going with you.”
He kissed her, searching to immerse himself in normality. “Good.”
Her arms went round his neck. “Come here. Let’s celebrate being us. I know quite a few things Marjorie never did for Grant.”
Carmitha spent the morning working in the rose grove, one of a thirty-strong team gainfully employed to return Norfolk’s legendary plants to order. Because of the delay, it was harder work than usual. The flower stems had toughened, and new late-summer shoots had flourished, tangling their way through the neat wire trellises. It all had to be trimmed away, returning the plants to their original broad fan-shape. She started by deadheading each plant, then used a stepladder to reach the topmost shoots, snipping through them with a pair of heavy-duty secateurs. Long whip-like shoots fell from her snapping blades to form a considerable criss-cross pile around the foot of the steps.
She also considered that the grass between the rows had been allowed to grow too long, but held her tongue. It was enough that they were keeping the basics of her world ticking over. When the end came, and the Confederation descended out of the strange blank sky to banish the possessing souls, enough would remain for the genuine inhabitants to carry on. Never as before , but there would be a degree of continuity. The next generation would be able to build their lives over the ruins of the horror.
It was the thought she remained faithful to throughout every day. The prospect that this wouldn’t end was a weakness she could not permit herself. Somewhere on the other side of this realm’s boundary, the Confederation was still intact; its leadership pouring every ounce of effort into finding them, and with that an answer.
Her belief faltered at what that answer might be. Simply expelling the souls back into the dark emptiness of the hereafter solved nothing. Some place devoid of suffering must be found for them. They, of course, thought they’d already found it by coming here. Fools. Poor blighted, tragic fools.
Similarly, her imagination failed to embrace exactly what life on Norfolk, and the other possessed worlds, would be like afterwards. She’d always respected the mild culture of spirituality in which she’d been raised, just as the house-dwellers worshiped their Christian God. Neither gave the slightest clue how to live once you truly knew you had an immortal soul. How could anyone take physical existence seriously now they knew that? Why do anything, why achieve anything when so much more awaited? She’d always resented this world’s artificial restrictions, while admitting she could never have an alternative. “A butterfly without wings,” her grandmother used to call her. Now the doorway into an awesome, infinite freedom had been flung wide open.