Molly Stewart was miles away, her thoughts lost in the clouds that drifted like puffs of cotton wool on the blue ocean of a summer sky. Hands behind her head, a blade of sweet grass standing straight up like a tiny mast, its white tip trapped in her teeth, she hadn't said a word since they'd made love. Seagulls cried where they made white splashes in the shallows, diving for fish, and their somehow plaintive songs came up off the sea on a breeze that moved the grass on the dunes like a caress.360Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeRg3Ya88D7
A caress, too, Brian's hand where he stroked her, even though he no longer commanded the full attention of her flesh. In a little while she might want him again, but if not it wouldn't matter. In fact he liked her like this: quiet, verging on sleep, with all of her strangeness sucked out of her. She was strange, yes, but that was all part of her fascination. It was one of the reasons he loved her. And sometimes he fancied that she loved him, too. It was hard to tell, with Molly. Most things were hard to tell with her.
"Molly," he said, gently tickling her ribs. "Anybody in?"
"Umm," the grass in her teeth gave a feeble twitch. He knew she wasn't ignoring him, knew that she simply wasn't here. Not here at all---not all of her---but somewhere else, somewhere very different. Now and then he would try to find out about that place, Molly's secret place, but so far she'd kept mum.
He sat up, buttoned his shirt, dusted off his trousers, brushing sand from their seat. "Molly, you need to do yourself up. There are people down the beach. If they walked this way they'd see."
"Umm," she said again.
He did it for her, then curled beside her and kissed her forehead. Tugging her ear, he asked, "What are you thinking? Where are you, Molly?"
"You don't want to know that," she said. "It's not always a nice place. I'm used to it, but you wouldn't like it."
"I'd like it if you were there," he said.
She turned her face toward him, squinted a little, frowned seriously. She could look very serious, he thought, sometimes---in face most of the time. Now she shook her head. "No, you wouldn't like it if I was there," she said. "You'd hate it."
"Not if I were with you."
"It's not a place where you can be with someone," she told him, which was as close to the truth as she'd ever come on this subject. "It's a place for being entirely alone."
He wanted to know more. "Molly, I...."
"Anyway, we're here," she cut him off. "Nowhere else. We're here and we've just made love."
Knowing that if he tried to probe deeper she would only retreat, he changed the subject. "You've made love to me," he said, "eight hundred and eleven times."
"I used to do that," she said, presently.
It stopped him dead in his tracks. After a moment's thought, he said: "Do what?"
"Count things. Anything. Tiles on a toilet wall. You know, while I was sitting there."
He sighed, exasperated. "I was talking about making love, Molly! Sometimes I think there's not an ounce of romance in you."
"There isn't now," she agreed. "You just had it all!" That was better. She was away from her morbid turn. That was how Brian thought of it when Molly was vague and strange in that way of hers: "a morbid turn." He went along with it, wrinkled his nose playfully, was glad for her humor.
"Eight hundred and eleven times," he repeated, "in just three years! That's a lot. Do you know how long we've been going out?"
"Since we were kids," she answered. Her eyes were on the sky again and he could see she was only half-interested in what he was saying. There was something on her mind, hovering on the periphery of her awareness. Knowing her, he knew it was there. Maybe one day he'd know what it was. All he knew now was that it came and went, and that this time it seemed to be taking its sweet time going.
"But how long?" he insisted. He caught her chin in a rugged hand, turned her face toward his.
She stared at him blankly, let her eyes focus of their own free will. "How long? For or five years, I suppose."
"Six," he said. "Since you were twelve and I was eleven. At twelve I took you to the movies and you held my hand."
"There you go," she said, making an effort and coming back to earth. "And you just accused me of being unromantic!"
"Oh?" he said. "But I bet you can't remember film we saw. It was Psycho. I don't know which of us was the most frightened!"
"I was," she grinned.
"Then," he continued," when you were thirteen, we made a picnic in the field at Ellison's Bank. After we had eaten we fooled about for a bit and I put my hand on your leg under your dress. You shouted at me and I pretended it was an accident. But the next week I did it again and you wouldn't speak to me for a fortnight."
"I should be so unlucky now!" Molly sighed. "Anyway, you soon enough came back for more."
"Then you started going to school in Hartlepool and I didn't see much of you. The winter was a long one. But the next summer was a good one---for us, anyway. One day we got a changing tent on the beach at Barton and went swimming. Afterwards, in the tent, I was supposed to be drying your back, I touched you."
"And you touched me," she reminded him.
"And I wanted you to lie down with me."
"But I wouldn't."
"Not until the next year. Molly, I wasn't even fifteen! That was awful!"
"Oh, it wasn't so bad," she grinned. "Not the way I remember it. But do you remember that first time?"
"Of course I do."
"What a mess," she chuckled ruefully. "Like trying to pick a lock with a piece of blotting paper."
He had to smile. "You got good at it very quickly, though," he said. "I always wondered where you learned it all. I suppose I really wondered if someone else had shown you how."
She had been smiling but now the smile fell from her face in a moment. "What do you mean by that?" she said sharply.
"Why, another boy, obviously!" He was startled by her abrupt change of mood. "What did you think I meant?"
"Another boy?" she was frowning still. But slowly her look turned first to a sour smile, then an amused grin, and at the last a shaky laugh. "Another boy!" she said again, laughing outright now. "What, when I was eleven?"
Relieved, Brian laughed with her. "You're funny," he said.
"You know," she answered, "it seems that all my life people have been telling me the same thing: that I'm funny. I'm not really, you know. God, sometimes I wish I knew how to be: how to have a good laugh! It's as if I don't have time, as if I've never had time. Did you ever get the feeling that if you don't laugh soon you'll scream? It's a feeling I get, I promise you."
He shook his head. "Sometimes I think I'll never understand you. And sometimes I think you don't want me to." He sighed. "It'd be nice if you wanted me as much as I want you."
Brian stood up, drew Molly to her feet and kissed her on the forehead, his way of changing the subject. "Come on, let's walk all the way along the beach into Hartlepool. You can catch a buss back to Glouden from there."
"Walk into Hartlepool? That'll take all day!"
"We'll stop for a coffee on the beach at Rugrow," Brian said. "And we can have a swim from the sands a bit farther along. Then we'll go to my place. You can stay until this evening if you like---unless you've other plans."
"No, I haven't----you know I haven't---but...."
"But?"
Suddenly Molly was upset, a touch of anxiety. "Brian, what's going to happen to us?"
"How do you mean?"
"Do you love me, Molly?"
"I think so."
"But you don't know? I mean, I know I love you."
They began to walk along the dunes, gradually making for the damp sands where the sea was retreating. There were people swimming in the sea down there but not many; the beach was filthy with all the debris of the coalmines to the north, a problem which had been growing for twenty-five years. Black lorries trundled at the waterline like great amphibious beetles, where their crews shoveled up rounded nuggets of washed sea-coal like black gold. A few miles south of here it was a little cleaner, but as far as Sutton Fishwick coal and slag deposits marred the clean white sands. Farther south still the damage was much less, but since the mines were almost exhausted Nature would soon begin to put things right again. Still, it would take a long time for the beaches to return to their former beauty. Perhaps they never would.
"Yes," Molly finally answered. "I think I do love you. I mean, I know I do. It's just that I've a lot on my mind. Is that what you mean? That I don't show it enough? See, I don't know what you want me to say. Or I haven't the time to think of the right things to say."
Brian clung to her arm, snuggled closer as they walked. "Oh, you don't have to say anything. It's just that I'd hate it to end....."
"Why should it end?"
"I don't know, but I worry about it. We don't seem to be getting anywhere. My parents worry, too....."
"Oh," she said glumly nodding. "Marriage, you mean?"
"No, not really," Brian sighed again. "I know how you feel about that: not yet, you keep saying. And: we're too young. I agree with you. I think my mother and father do, too. I know you like to be on your own a lot; and you're right: we are too young!"
"You keep saying that," she said, "but still we end up going round in circles."
He looked downcast. "It's just that---well, the way you are, I never know what's what. If only you'd tell me what it is that preoccupies you so. I know there's something, but you won't say."
She looked about to say something, changed her mind. Brian held his breath, let it go when it became apparent she'd backed off. He tried elimination.
"I know it's not your writing, because you were like this long before you started to write. In fact, as long as I've known you. If only..."
"Brian!" she stopped, grabbed him in her arms, dragged him to a halt. She seemed breathless, unable to speak, to say what he wanted to say. It frightened her.
"Yes, Molly? What is it?"
She gulped, drew breath, started to walk again. He caught up with her, grabbed her hand. "Molly?"
She wouldn't look at him, but she said:
"Brian, I---I want to talk to you."
"But I want you to!" he said.
Again she stopped walking, drew him into an embrace, stared out to sea over his shoulder. "It's a queer subject, that's all...."
He took the initiative, broke away, led her by the hand along the beach. "Right. We walk, you talk, I listen. Queer subject? I don't mind. There, I've done my part. Your turn."
She nodded, glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, coughed to clear her throat and said: "Brian, have you ever wondered what people think about when they're dead? I mean, what their thoughts are when they lie there in their graves."
He felt goosebumps come up on his neck and at the top of his spine. Even with the sun hot on her, the utterly emotionless tone of her voice coupled with what she had said chilled him to the marrow. "Have I ever wondered....?"
"I said it was a queer subject," she hurriedly reminded her.
He didn't know what to say to her, how to answer her. He gave an involuntarily shudder. She couldn't be serious, could she? Or was this something she was working on? That must be it: it was a story she was writing!
Brian was disappointed. A story, that's all. On the other hand, maybe he'd been wrong to neglect her writing as the source of her moodiness. Maybe she was that way because there was nobody to talk to. Everyone knew that she was precocious; her writing was brilliant, the work of a mature woman. Was that it? Was it just that she had so much bottled up inside, and no way to release it?
"Molly," he said, "you should have told me it was your writing!"
"My writing?" her eyebrows went up.
"A story," he said. "That's what it is, isn't it?"
She began to shaker her head, then changed it to a nod. And smiling, she nodded more rapidly. "You guessed it," she said. "A story. But a weird one. I'm having trouble putting it together. If I could talk about it...."
"But you can, to me."
"So let's talk. It might give me some more ideas, or tell me w hat's wrong with the ideas I've got now."
They carried on walking, hand in hand. "Right," he said, and after frowning for a moment, "happy thoughts."
"Eh?"
"The dead, in their graves. I think they'd think happy thoughts. That would be the equivalent of heaven, you know."
"People who were unhappy in their lives don't think anything," she told him, matter-of-factly. " They're just glad to be out of it, mostly."
"You mean that you're going to have categories of dead people: they won't be all the same or think the same thoughts."
She nodded. "Righto. Why should they? They didn't have the same thoughts when they were alive, did they? Oh, some of them are happy, with nothing to complain of. But there are others who lie there sick with hatred, because they know the ones who killed them live on, unpunished."
"Molly, that's an awful idea! What sort of story is it, anyway? It's got to be a ghost story."
She licked her lips and nodded again. "Something like that, yes. It's a about a woman who can talk to people in their graves. She can hear them, in her head, and know what they're thinking. Yes, and she can talk to them."
"I still think it's horrible," he said. "I mean, it's really horrid! But the idea is good. And these dead people would really talk to her? But why would they want to?"
"Because they're lonely. See, there nobody else like this woman. As far as she knows, she's the only one who can do it. They don't have anyone else to talk to."
"Wouldn't that drive her mad? I mean, all those voices in her head at the same time, all yammering for her attention."
Molly gave a wry smile. "It doesn't happen like that," she said. "See, normally they just lie there, thinking. The body goes---I mean, you know, it rots---eventually becomes dust. But the mind goes on. Don't ask me how, that's something I won't try to explain. It's just that the mind is the conscious and the subconscious control center of a person, and after she dies it carries on---but only on the subconscious level. Like she's sleeping; and in fact he is sleeping, in a way. It's just that he won't wake up again. So you see, the Mollyscope only talks to the people she wants to talk to."360Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡntR39Uvlg4
"Mollyscope?"
"That's my name for the heroine of my story. She's a woman who looks into the minds of the dea...."
"I see," said Brian, frowning. "At least, I think I do. So happy people just lie there remembering all the good things, or thinking happy thoughts. And unhappy people, they just turn off?"
"Something like that. Malicious people think bad things, and murderers think murderous thoughts, and so on: their own particular kinds of hell, if you wish. But these are the ordinary people, with ordinary thoughts. I mean, their thoughts run on a low level. Let's say that in life their thoughts were pretty mundane. I'm not putting them down; they just weren't very bright, that's all. But there are extraordinary people, too; creative people, great thinkers, architects, mathematicians, authors, the real intellectuals. And what do you suppose they do?"
Brian looked up at her, trying to gauge her thoughts. He paused to pick up a bright, sea-washed pebble. And in a little while: "I suppose they'd go on doing their thing," she said. "If they were, say, great thinkers in their lives, then they'd just go on sort of thinking their special thoughts."
"Right!' said Molly emphatically. "That's exactly what they do. The bridge-builders go on building their bridges---in their heads. Beautiful, airy things that span whole oceans! The musicians write wonderful songs and melodies. The mathematicians develop abstract theories and polish them until they're crystal things that they hold the secrets of the universe. They improve upon what they were doing when they were alive. They carry their ideas to the limits of perfection, finishing all the unfinished thoughts they never had time for when they lived. And no distractions, no outside interference, no one to bother or confuse or concern them."
"The way you tell it," he said, "it sounds nice. But do you think that's how it really is?"
"Of course," she nodded, and quickly checked herself. "In my story, anyway. I mean, how would I know what it's really like?"
"I was just being corny," he told her. "Of course it's not really like that. Anyway, I still don't see why these dead people would want to talk to this, er, Mollyscope. Wouldn't she be a distraction? Wouldn't she annoy them, butting in like that on all their great schemes?"
"No," Molly shook her head. "On the contrary. It's human nature, see? What's the good of doing something wonderful if you can't tell or show anyone what you've done? That's why they enjoy talking to the Mollyscope. She can appreciate their genius. She's the only one who can do that! Also, she's sympathetic ----she wants to know about their wonderful discoveries, the fantastic inventions they've designed, which won't be invented in the real world for a thousand years!"
Brian suddenly saw something in what she'd said. "But that's a wonderful idea, Molly! It's not morbid at all, as I first thought. Why, the Mollyscope could "invent" their inventions for them! She could build their bridges, make their music, write their unwritten masterpieces! Is that what's going to happen? In your story, that is?"
She turned her face away, stood gazing far out to sea, and said: "Something like that, I suppose. That's what I haven't worked out yet...."
Then for a while they were silent, and shortly afterwards they came to Rugrow and stopped for coffee in a little café at the foot of the beach banks.360Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnFvM5ZfjCQ
Molly lay sleeping on her bed, stark naked, the sheets thrown back. It was a very warm evening, and the sun, sinking, continued to stream its golden fire in through the high windows of her tiny flat. Seeing the fine sheen of sweat where it made her brow damp, Brian drew the thin curtains across the garret windows to cut down on the sunlight. As the shadow fell across her face she groaned and mumbled something, but Brian couldn't catch what she said. Quietly dressing, he thought back on the day. He thought back to other times, too, allowing his memory to full rein as he examined the years he and Molly had known each other.
Today had been good. And at last Molly had talked to him about---well, about things. She'd opened up a little and got some of it off her chest and out of her system. And since their long talk about her story she'd been a lot easier in herself, happy almost. Just what it would take to make her truly happy----Brian could hardly imagine the nature of such a thing. She said it was that she had "a lot on her mind." A lot of what? Her writing? Maybe. But he'd never known her to be truly happy. Or if she'd been it hadn't shown much....
But there, he'd side-tracked herself. He went back to today.
After Rugrow they'd walked on for another mile to a more or less deserted part of the beach where they'd gone swimming in their underwear. From a distance nobody would be able to tell; it would be thought they wore costumes. After a little while, as they fooled about in the water, some old beachcombing tramp had come on the scene and it'd been time to go. Dressing before the old boy could get really close, they'd dried out as they covered the final leg of their walk. In Hartlepool, a bus ride from the old part of the town to the "new" had carried them almost to the door of the three-story Victorian house where Molly had her garret flat, and there Brian had made sandwiches for them before they'd showered and made love. The sex they'd shared had been delicious, with both of them still tasting a little of the sea's salt, all glowing from the sun and radiating their heat, and all seeming very right and natural. He liked Molly best in the summer, for then she wasn't so pale and her thin frame seemed somehow shapelier.
Not that she was in any way out of shape or plain-looking; Molly was well able to look after herself and hardly the type to accept sand kicked in her face. Twice Brian had seen her deal with would-be bullies, and they had been the ones to go away nursing cuts and bruises. He secretly prided herself that on both occasions he had been the spur to her anger. Molly was indifferent towards jibes aimed at herself---she could always ignore them, put them down to the ignorance of louts----but she would not accept insults or insinuations directed at Brian, or at herself when he was with her. At times like that she seemed almost to become another person, a harder, faster, more capable person entirely. And yet even her mastery of self-defense mystified him; it was just another of those things in which she had grown inexplicably expert.
Like her lovemaking, and her writing. Brian looked at them in that order:
Molly had been sixteen when she first made love to him---when they first did it right, anyway----but she'd been eager for it long before that. And as he had pointed out on the beach, she had very quickly got to be very good at it. Innocent in all such things, Brian had thought there was only one way to do it, but Molly's sexual repertoire had seemed inexhaustible. And it was perfectly true: he had often wondered if someone else had shown her how. In the end he'd stopped worrying about it, putting it down to the fact that she was precocious. For some unexplained reason there were skills in which Molly Stewart excelled----in which she excelled naturally, without any prior knowledge or intensive instruction.
Her writing:
Molly had once admitted that her English had used to let her down badly; it had very nearly stopped her going on to the Tech to complete his schooling, when she'd completely messed up the English examination paper. Well, however much that had been the case then, it surely wasn't so now. Maybe it was that she'd worked hard at it, but when? Brian had never seen her studying or swotting up his English; she had never seemed to study anything much. And yet here she was, eighteen years old and an author, and so prolific that she was published under four pseudonyms! Only short stories so far, but three a week at least---and all of them snapped up---and he knew that she was now working on a novel.
Her battered, second-hand typewriter stood on a small table close to the window. Once when he'd dropped in to see her unexpectedly, Molly had been working. It was one of the few occasions when Brian had actually seen her working. Coming up stairs, he heard the intermittent clatter of the keys of her machine, and creeping into her tiny entrance hall he'd poked his head around the door. Lost in thought, smiling to herself---even muttering to herself, he'd fancied----Molly's chin had been propped in her hands where she sat at the table. Then she had straightened up to tap out a few more two-fingered lines, only pausing to nod and smile at some private thought, and gaze out of the garret window and across the road.
Then he'd knocked at the door, startling her, and entered the room; Molly had greeted him, put away her work and that had been all---except that he'd glance at the sheet of paper in the typewriter and had seen typed at its head: Diary of Conan Pippery, 17th Century Womanizer.
It was only later that he'd wondered what Molly could possibly know about the 17th century (what, Molly? with her limited knowledge of history, which is at it happened had always been his very worst subject?) or, for that matter, womanizers.....
He was all done with dressing now and tiptoed across the room to comb his hair in front of a wall mirror. This took him close to her table, and again he glanced at the typewriter and the uncompleted sheet it contained. Obviously she was still hard at her novel: the A4 sheet was numbered P.213 and in the left hand upper corner bore the legend Diary of....etc.
Brian wound the sheet up a little and read what was written---or at least started to. Then, blushing, he averted her eyes, stared out the window. It was hot stuff: very polished, very stylish, extremely bawdy! Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at the sheet again. He loved 17th-century romances and Molly's style was perfect---but this wasn't a romance and her material was frankly pornographic.
Only then did he notice what he was looking at through the window: the old cemetery across the road. The graveyard, four hundred years old, with its great horse-chestnuts, glossy shrubbery and flower borders, its leaning, weathered headstones and generally well-tended pebble plots. And as he gazed, so he wondered at Molly's choice of a dwelling-place. There were better flats around, all over town, but she had told her that she "liked the view." And it was only now that he'd realized what the view was. Oh, pretty enough in the summer, sure, but a graveyard for all that!
Behind him Molly once more mouthed something and turned on her side. He crossed to where she lay and smiled gently down on her, then drew a sheet over her lower half. In the shade now, she was starting to shiver a little. In any case, he would soon have to wake her; it was time he got on his way. His parents liked him to be in while it was still daylight, on those occasions when they didn't know where he was. But first he'd make some coffee. As he began to turn away Molly spoke yet again, and this time her words were very clear:
"Don't worry, Ma. I'm a big girl now. I can take care of myself. You can rest easy....." She paused and even sleeping seemed to adopt an attitude of listening. Then: "No, I've told you before, Ma----he didn't hurt me. Why should he? Anyway I went to Auntie and Uncle. They looked after me. Now I'm grown up. And very soon now, maybe when you know I'm okay, then you'll be able to rest easy...."
Another pause, a brief period of listening, and; "But why can't you, Ma?"
Then more incoherent mumbling before. "......I can't! Too far away. I know you're trying to tell me something but----just a whisper, Ma. I hear some of it but....don't know what....make out what you're saying. Maybe if I come to see you, come to where you are....."
Molly was restless now and sweating profusely for all that she shivered. Looking at him, Brian became a little worried. Was it some sort of fever? Sweat gathered in the hollow above the middle of her upper lip; it formed droplets on her forehead and made her long curly hair damp; her hands jerked and twitched beneath the sheet.
He reached out a hand and touched her. "Molly?"
"What!" she burst awake, her almond eyes snapping open and staring fixedly, her entire body going rigid as a tire iron. "Who.....?"
"Molly, Molly! It's just me. You were nightmaring." Brian cradled her in his arms and she let him, curling up and throwing her arms about him. "It was about your Mam, Molly. Listen, you're all right now. Let me go and make some coffee."
He hugged her tighter for a moment, then gently released herself and stood up. Her eyes, still wide open, followed him as he moved to the alcove where she had his rudimentary kitchen. "About my mother?" she said.
Spooning instant coffee into mugs, he nodded. He filled the electric kettle and switched it on. "You called her 'Ma,' and you were talking to her."
She uncurled herself and sat up, brushing her fingers dazedly through her curly mane of hair. "What did I say?"
He shook his head. "Nothing much. Mainly mumbo-jumbo. You told her you were grown up now, and that she should rest easy. It was just a nightmare, Molly."
By the time the coffee was ready she had dressed herself. They said no more about her nightmare but drank their coffees; then she walked with him down to the bust-stop for Glouden, where they waited in silence until the bus came. At the last, before he boarded, she kissed him lightly on the cheek. "See you soon," she said.
"Tomorrow?" Tomorrow was Sunday.
"No, during the week. I'll come up for you. 'Bye, love."
He got a seat at the back of the bus and watched Molly through the rear window where she stood alone at the stop. As the bust began to round a bend she turned on her heel and walked along the pavement away from her flat. Wondering where she was headed, Brian kept watching her as long as he could. The last he saw of her was when she turned in through the gates of the cemetery, with the sun's final rays burning in her hair.
Then the bus was round the bend and Molly was out of sight.360Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsRtQuNHx0E
Molly didn't come to see him during the week, and Brian's work began to suffer at the ladies' hairdressing salon in Glouden. By Thursday he was thoroughly worried about her; on Friday night his worry had blown up into a full blown donnybrook with his father who said he was a fool for her. "That bird's bloody weird!" he declared. "Our Brian, you must be soft!" And he wouldn't hear of him going down to Hartlepool that night. "Not on a Friday night, my boy, when all the lads have their beer money. You can see your daft Molly tomorrow!"
Tomorrow seemed ages in coming and Brian hardly slept at all, but Saturday morning bright and early he took a bus into town and went up to Molly's flat. He had her own key and let herself in but she wasn't to be found. In the typewriter was a sheet of paper with yesterday's date and a brief message:360Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡDtDA2HKSPz
Brian----360Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNnxA79S9AZ
I've gone up to Glasgow for the weekend. I've people to see up there. I'll be back Monday at the latest and I'll see you then---promise. Sorry I didn't see you during the week---I had a lot on my mind and wouldn't have been good company.
Love, Molly.
The final two words meant a lot to him and so he forgave her the rest. Anyway, Monday wasn't so very far away---but who could she possibly have to see in Glasgow? She had a stepfather up there, who hadn't once seen her since she was a child, but who else? No one that Brian knew of. Other relatives that he didn't know of? Maybe. And then there'd been her mother, except she'd been drowned when Molly was little more than a baby.
Drowned, yes, but Molly had been talking to her in her sleep....
Brian shook himself. Why, some of his ideas were almost as morbid as Molly's! All graveyards and death and maggots. No, of course she wouldn't be going to see her mother, for they'd never found her body. There would be no grave for her to visit.
The thought didn't improve Brian's state of mind. Instead it drove him to do something he'd never normally consider. He carefully went through Molly's file of manuscripts, checking every story whether it was complete or barely started. He didn't really know what he was looking for, but by the time he was through he knew what he'd failed to find.
Nowhere in all her work had he come across a story about a "Mollyscope."
So, either Molly hadn't started the story yet...
Or she was a liar....
Or....
Or what was bothering him was something entirely different.360Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWc7DvNlw54
As Brian Cowell stood in a shaft of morning sunlight in Molly's flat, pondering the strangeness of the woman he was involved with, one hundred and twenty miles away Molly Stewart herself stood in the same sunlight on the banks of a sleepy river in Scotland and looked across it at the big house where it stood at the head of a large, overgrown garden. There had been a time when the place was well maintained, but that was a long time ago and Molly couldn't remember it. She'd been too young, an infant, and there were many things she couldn't remember. But she remembered her mother. Somewhere, deep in her subconscious mind, she'd never forgotten about her---and she had never forgotten about Molly. And she still worried about her.
Molly stared at the house for a long time, then at the river. Its waters moved slowly, swirling, cool and inviting, at least to most. A grassy bank with a few reeds; deep green water, and just here, a pebbly bottom; and somewhere down there, lodged in the slime-slick pebbles where it had lain for most of Molly's years....
A ring. A man's ring. A cat's-eye stone set in thick gold. Molly staggered at the river's edge. She deliberately flopped down to save herself from falling. The sun shone on her but he was cold. The blue sky reeled, became the gray, liquid slurry of slushy water.
She was under the water, trying to fight her way up through a hole in the ice.
Then the face seen through the ice, its trembling jelly lips turning up at their corners in a grimace----or a smile! The hands coming down into the water, holding her under---and on one of them that ring. The cat's-eye ring, on the second finger of the right hand! And Molly tearing at those hands, clawing at them, ripping the strong flesh in her frenzy. The gold ring coming loose, spiraling down past her into the murk and the icy deeps. Blood from the torn hands turning the swirling water red---red against the black of Molly's dying!
No, not her dying, her mother's!
Waterlogged, Molly/Molly's mother sank; and the current dragging them along under the ice, turning and tumbling them: and who'll look after Molly now? Poor little Molly....
The nightmare receded, its rush and gurgle diminishing in her mind, leaving her gasping for hair where she clawed at the grassy bank. Then he curled on her side and was violently ill. This was it; it was here. This was where it had happened. This was where Mother had died. Where she had been murdered. Right here!
But...
Where was she now?
Molly allowed her feet to lead her, following the course of the river downstream. Where the channel narrowed a little, she crossed a small wooden bridge and continued on down the bank. Garden hedges came down close to the river's edge here, so that she walked a narrow, often overgrown path between fences on the one hand and reeds and water on the other. And in a little while she came to a place where the bank had been worn away, forming an overhanging bite not ten feet across. Above the still water in the pool, the path ended where the fence leaned dangerously riverward, but Molly knew she need look no further. This is where she lay.
Anyone watching her from the bank opposite would have seen the start of a strange thing then. Molly sat down with her feet dangling over the shallow, muddy pool, put her chin in her hands, stared deep in the water. And minutes later, if anyone had been closer, she would've been witness to something stranger yet: tears from this young lady's staring, unblinking eyes which dripped from the tip of her nose in a steady stream to add their substance to the river's.
And for the first time in her adult life Molly Stewart met her mother, talked to her "face to face," and was able to verify the terrible things in her dreams and Mother's restless messages had caused her to more than suspect for so many years. And while they talked she cried---tears of sadness, and some of gladness at first; then of remorse and frustration, that she'd had to wait so long for this day; then of white anger as things started to make more sense to her. At last she told her mother what she intended to do.
Upon which the wondering observer (had there been one) would have seen the strangest thing of all. For when Constance Stewart knew of her daughter's plans she became even more afraid for her and voiced her fears, and she made Molly promise that she would do nothing rash. She couldn't deny her mother's pleading, answered with a nod of her head. She didn't believe her, cried out after her as she stood up and moved away. And for a moment----the merest second---it seemed that the bottom of the pool shuddered, shaking the water and sending ripples coursing outward from its middle. Then the pool was still again.
Molly didn't see this for already she was making for the bridge, returning to the spot where it had happened all those years ago. The place where her gentle mother had been murdered.
She found a place where the reeds grew tall, checked that she was completely alone, stripped down to her bra and panties and stepped to the river's edge. A moment later she was in the water, diving deep, then making for the middle where the current ran swiftest. Even there the river's pull was barely noticeable, and after twenty minutes of diving and delving amongst the pebbles of the bottom she found what she was looking for. It lay within a few inches of the spot where she'd first thought it might be, tarnished and a little slimy, but unmistakably a ring. The gold gleamed through on the instant she rubbed it, and the cat's-eye stone held its cold, unblinking stare as of old. Molly had never actually seen the ring before that moment when her groping fingers found it---not consciously, anyway---but she knew it at once. It was that familiar. Nor did it seem odd to her that she'd known where to look. Stranger far if the ring had not been there.
On the back of the river she finished cleaning it, slid it onto the index finger of her left hand which it fettle a little loosely but not so slack that she might lose it, and turned it thoughtfully between her fingers, getting the feel of it. It felt cold even under the hot sun, cold as the day its owner had lost it.
Then Molly dressed and headed for Clydebank. From there she'd catch a bus into Glasgow and take the first train home to Hartlepool. Her work here was done---for now.
Now that she'd found her mother she'd have no trouble reaching her again, no matter how far she wandered, and she would be able to calm her fears and give Mother a little of the peace she'd sought for so long. Constance Stewart would no longer need to worry about little Molly.
Before leaving the spot by the river, however, she paused to look again at the big house where it stood well back from the opposite bank; and she stared at its old gables and wild gardens for long, long moments. Her stepfather still lived and worked there, she knew. Yes, and it would not be too long before Molly paid him a visit.
But before that there was much she would have to do. Sergei Lerner was a dangerous man, a murderer, and Molly must be careful how she approached him. She intended that her stepfather should pay the price for her mother's death---that he must be punished in full---but the punishment would have to fit the crime. And no use at all to just accuse the man, for what proof was there after all these years? No, Molly must set a trap and bait it, a trap Lerner would find irresistible. But no hurry, none at all, for Molly had time on her side. Time would allow her to become expert in many things, and indeed she had much to learn. For what good to be the Mollyscope if she could make no use of her talents? As to how she would use her talent after she had avenged her mother's death: that remained to be seen. It would be as it would be.
But right now her instructors were waiting for her and they were the world's finest. Yes, and that knew far more now than ever they had known when they were alive.
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