The Wild Bone Basilica

By Susan de Nimes

Now Erin is about to be 18 her mysterious mentor Jean-Baptiste returns from years absence to tell her that everything she knew about her dead parents and the wealthy grandmother who has provided for her since their deaths, are lies, but, soon to be an adult, Erin must uncover the truths for herself. Clues seem to lie in Jean-Baptiste’s semi-derelict Breton Manoir. But when Erin sets out on her own to unvravel them, she discovers they involve sadism, murder, lost wealth and occult intrigue besides in the bizarre wild bone basilica.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Martin
• Release date: Sep 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301669486

Susan de Nimes

Susan de Nimes is almost as beautiful as she thinks she is but considerably nastier. Her only saving grace is a warped sense of humour and fierce intelligence. Her ambition is to become as rich as she deserves.

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THE WILD BONE BASILICA

by Susan de Nimes

Copyright © Susan de Nimes 2001

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Cover copyright © Robin Matto

www.robinmatto.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE

Chapter01

Chapter02 by Alexia Rogan

Chapter03 by George Charman

Chapter04

Chapter05

Chapter06

Chapter07

Chapter08

Chapter09 The vernacular conceit

Chapter10

Chapter11 by George Charman

Chapter12

Chapter13 by George Charman

Chapter14

Chapter15

Chapter16 by George Charman

Chapter17

Chapter18

PART TWO

Chapter19

Chapter20

Chapter21 by Alexia Rogan

Chapter22

Chapter23

Chapter24

Chapter25

PART THREE

Chapter26

Chapter27

Chapter28

Chapter29

Chapter30

PS: for my children

For Angelique Charman

PART ONE

FRIDAY 14th MARCH 2003

Chapter 1

It was only three days ago when I woke and looked out from my bedroom window and saw strange twists of early morning mist thread menacingly across the parkland, trespassing like unpredictable wild animals across our strictly private domesticated landscape.

I stared into the mists and saw a stocky figure emerge dressed in a long black winter coat. He carried a briefcase and walked purposefully over the freshly gravelled track towards my coach house. He was almost at my door before I recognised him and said out loud:

‘Jean-Baptiste.’

I raced downstairs and unlocked the door to greet him. When he smiled I saw how lined his dark face had become. But then I realised he must be almost seventy; it was not surprising if he showed his age. He had not lost the magic in his eyes. He still had the aura of a man who made things happen. His smile still made me feel the old excitement he aroused of infinite possibilities, but for all my joy at seeing him again I felt a sudden anger I could not conceal:

‘Why did you go away Jean-Baptiste? Why go without even a goodbye?’

His smile faded as he said:

‘You must ask your grandmother that, Erin.’

‘Not a letter or call in almost two years, why?’

‘She said my job was done, it was time to slip away: a clean break. Simple as that.’

‘I was your job? Just a job? Oh, and you had to obey Jennifer, didn’t you? Were you her slave?’

I knew that would sting him but he snapped back:

‘Live on her land and take what she gives, do what she says and you are her slave too, even you, Erin, her granddaughter.’

‘Step granddaughter - ’

‘A fine distinction after all she’s done for you - but I’m back here now for a few hours and I’ve brought you something for your eighteenth birthday.’

‘Have you forgotten when it is?’

‘March the seventeenth.’

‘Still a week off.’

‘I know, but by the time you’re eighteenth you’ll be an adult - free. You must be prepared.’

‘I am free now.’

‘No. You’re still a prisoner here. I was wrong to go, I shouldn’t have left you.’

‘Why did you then?’

‘As I said. Ask Jennifer.’

‘You think she’d tell me?’

He paused then he said:

‘No, you’re right, she’d never tell you what she really felt then.’

‘Which was?’

‘Jealousy, among other things.’

‘Jealous of what, me? Why, in what way?’

‘We worked so closely together, you and I: she might have thought us more than just pupil and teacher - you were almost sixteen - so beautiful. I don’t know exactly what she was thinking, but to avoid confrontation, accusation, misinterpretation - it was easiest - better for all concerned - to accept that her feelings were too strong to be reasoned with. So I did as she wished and I went.’

‘What did she suspect?’

He shrugged and looked away, but I knew that Jennifer had not been entirely wrong in her suspicions of me. Whatever Jean-Baptiste might have secretly felt, I see now that I did love him then, despite his age, even though I was only just sixteen when he went. He was the first man I loved as a man, a man worthy of love, and maybe I would have come to express that love if he’d stayed, if he’d wanted me to express it: and then what? An outcome that my step-grandmother Jennifer would not have welcomed between me and her ex lover, not that she would have been nasty about it, just disappointed. Oh how I dreaded her calm expressions of disappointment, far more effective over the years than a raised hand or a raised voice.

Jennifer Charman was my late father’s stepmother, making her my step-grandmother, which might sound rather intimidating but Jennifer does not rule by intimidation. One would never think to look into her eyes that she too is almost seventy. She never raised her voice to me or said a word in anger but sometimes she would gently say, if I’d done something indisputably wrong, that I’d disappointed her. I don’t know how she managed it, but the last thing I ever wanted to do to anyone in the world, until yesterday, was to disappoint her. But yesterday I left the coach house on her estate without a word to her, just as her niece, Francine, had once done many years ago. I know that was bad of me, I know how much it will disappoint Jennifer, but I had no choice. Maybe Francine felt she had no choice either when she left.

‘So you see,’ Jean-Baptiste said, ‘if I’d taken you away and freed you back then, what would she have thought?’

‘Would it have mattered?’

‘It wouldn’t have been right.’

‘It wasn’t right to leave the way you did.’

‘It seemed right at the time, for many reasons. But I should have given you something before I left: my present for you now.’

He walked past me through to my warm kitchen and sat down at the carved oak table with his brief case. I sat down in front of him and he looked into my eyes, the way he always used to - he could always see right into my heart - and he said:

‘The accident when you were four: the injuries, the terrible blow to your head - it was a good thing you forgot everything back then, those troubled times. Jennifer always said ‘tell her nothing unless she asks’ and that if you did ask, just to say your parents died in the car crash that injured you. But it wasn’t that way at all. Your parents didn’t die together and you weren’t with them. Maybe none of it was by accident.’

‘But - .’

‘All in good time; hear me out. Jennifer brought you back here after your accident, when you were well enough to leave hospital: she gave you back a life. Maybe she doesn’t ask for much, but can you really question the few things she does ask of you, after all she’s done for you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘So it was with me. I was here, principally, to help you, but if she disapproved of anything, I had to respect her wishes. I was forever modifying my teachings to please her, while still trying to teach you what I thought you should learn.’

‘What did she disapprove of?’

‘Hah, well. I suppose, at base, she was afraid I might turn you into a - ’

‘What?’

‘What do you call someone who can make things happen, make things change; beguile you or blight you as is her whim? What would you call a woman like her?’

I knew what he meant: but I will never say that word. I refuse to be blighted by that prejudicial term for a woman whose will can create independence. Maybe if I want to impose my will to achieve independence I will have to live in solitude to escape condemnation: so be it. But I retorted:

‘I know what I would call a man like that, particularly if he chose to dwell amidst forests, lakes and fast running streams.’

‘What then?’

I laughed:

‘Why, a sorcerer of course. Isn’t that what you once called yourself?’

‘Long ago, it was joke, only a joke. Jennifer never shared that particular joke.’

‘Not one for jokes, step-grandmother Jennifer. Is she happy for you to be here now?’

‘She’s invited me for your birthday. She doesn’t know I’m here now. I parked on the road and crossed the fields to the track. Don’t tell her you’ve seen me, don’t mention my gift.’

‘But I tell her everything, Jean-Baptiste, always.’

‘Everything?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Why not? I have no secrets from her. I owe her everything.’

‘Of course: you have her to thank for this coach house - this lovely home of yours - and for the beautiful surroundings here at Bulmershe Park; she’s never far away in her exquisite house if ever you need anything; you never miss out on her generous allowance do you?’

‘No, as I said - ’

‘No secrets, and yet - don’t you and this Toby fellow plan to get engaged on your eighteenth birthday without the common courtesy of asking her?’

I felt my face go bright red.

‘Who told you that Jean-Baptiste? It’s my private business.’

‘Not quite: the price you pay for accepting Jennifer’s largesse is that you have no entitlement to private business.’

He was right but it hurt to be instantly reduced to the status of silly little dependent girl when I’d fancied myself to be so grown up and independent. I tried to win back ground.

‘Anyway, things have been going wrong with Toby. I’m not sure about anything right now.’

‘Well I am quite sure about Toby and his dysfunctional family: bad news. Jennifer has given you a very long leash, Erin, but a leash all the same. She expects you to go to University this September, not get engaged to a scrounger.’

‘But how did she know we were getting engaged? Has she spied on me? Have you? Did she ask you to come back on my birthday just to talk about Toby?’

He gave me a guilty smile and I felt angry.

‘Oh. So you’re only here now, after all this time, because she commanded you to return?’

‘No, she doesn’t know I am here now.’

‘You never came when I was seventeen.’

‘Not as important as eighteen, and Jennifer knows nothing about my gift for you here either; so much for being her slave, as you accused me. But this Toby - ?’

‘I don’t know what will happen with Toby, but it’s not up to Jennifer. Or you.’

‘Accepted: but I do agree with Jennifer: you should have nothing more to do with him, let alone get engaged.’

‘But my parents, how did they die then? Where was I?’

Jean-Baptiste put his brief case on the kitchen table and took out a fat brown envelope bulging with papers.

‘I know Jennifer thinks the past best forgotten but these were written by your parents. Your father wrote about his life after separating from your mother. He wrote it to her. When your mother read his words she began to write about their brief life together, and she wrote it for you, but then she died in a car accident: head on into a tree, no-one else involved.’

‘Jennifer told me we were all together when the hit and run driver - but is my father not dead then?’

‘Oh I’m pretty sure he’s dead, and died first. That is: your mother wrote that she found him dead.’

‘Found him? Where? How had he died?’

‘Well, that’s where it all gets a little - let me put it this way: only your mother ever saw your father’s body. She claimed to have found him dead - murdered I might add - and he has never been seen or heard of since, neither has any of his money been found, and he was a wealthy young man back then. There was only your mother’s word that she found him dead, in her disturbed, paranoid writings to you, and she told Jennifer things during the course of her subsequent breakdown. Soon after, she too was dead: hit a tree in her car, leaving you an orphan to be brought up by your father’s stepmother.’

‘Are you inferring that my mother, perhaps killed my father, then killed herself in an act of remorse?’

‘I have no more idea of what really happened than you will have after reading their words. But if you’d rather, I can take these papers away again until you feel ready.’

‘You say my mother wrote them for me?’

‘She did.’

‘Then I must read what she wrote, and whatever my father wrote for her.’

‘Exactly what I think. Just don’t tell Jennifer about these papers.’

‘She’s never read them?’

‘She knows nothing about them. Easier for all concerned if she remains in ignorance.’

‘About her step son and his lover: my parents?’

‘Trust me, it’s for the best. One other thing I should tell you: you know who lived in this coach house years before Jennifer let you move in?’

‘Her niece, Francine, Jennifer told me Francine suddenly left fourteen or fifteen years ago without a word of thanks and never came back.’

‘Francine was my daughter. She was not much older than you when she left.’

‘Jennifer has never - ’

‘All part of the past she thinks best forgotten.’

‘You never said either. Your daughter? Were you married to Jennifer’s sister?’

‘Not married, no - it didn’t last long, just long enough - it was all wrong, very wrong. Wrong of me. I lost touch with Francine for years, when I found her again she took my name: d’Anzay. I think it suited her to have a new identity. But now you are about to become an adult you should have as much of the past as we can find.’

‘Find, where?’

Francine left here to live with me in Brittany. As I’ve said, you are as good as Jennifer’s prisoner here - Francine felt the same.’

‘No, Jean-Baptiste, I don’t feel like that. She’s very good to me.’

‘If you sink above your head into honey you will drown as surely as if sea water fills your lungs. I’m not saying you should disappear without a word as Francine did, just that you should have somewhere to go if ever you feel like stepping outside all of this to reconsider your life. Perhaps you might feel like that after reading your parents’ words. Perhaps there is someone you may wish to escape from?’

‘Like Toby?’

‘If you want to get right away from him for a while, yes: a clean break.’

‘I think I might want that, soon.’

‘Well I have this house in France where you can escape any time you want, an old Manoir.’

‘Your home? Jennifer told me a little about it.’

‘Did she say it belonged for a while to your father? Did she tell you that?’

‘No.’

‘I didn’t think she would. But it’s the perfect place to escape and let go of the modern world, allow yourself to think, to contemplate. It’s just about habitable. In fact, you were conceived there.’

‘I was? I never knew.’

‘Well you might have been told all sorts of things but forgot them after your accident.’

I’ve always known I was involved in a terrible accident when I was four, I thought my parents died in it. Since conventional medicine still had not helped my full recovery, many years after the accident, Jennifer brought Jean-Baptiste to Bulmershe Park hoping he could heal me with his unorthodox methods: exercises, dances, rituals, incantations, even regular immersions in cold water.

She paid for my private tutors but sometimes Jean-Baptiste taught me too. His lessons were as strange as his healing methods. His subject was always ‘The human being’ but he taught me about humans as if they were an alien species. He began with human physiology; the species’ limited strengths and vast array of weaknesses, which was appropriate since I had been so badly damaged by my accident, physically and mentally, and yet, unspoken was the notion that neither of us were mere humans. We were not limited physically and mentally as mere humans are.

When I’d regained some strength and capability Jean-Baptiste’s lessons became more complex, the elements of human nature: how to use other human beings to expand the potential of your own life; how to make them do what you want them to do without them knowing it; how men and women over the centuries have used these techniques to gain power, to resist oppression. He gave me the classics of European literature to read not as literature but as studies of the broad picture of human life. He said they were written by brilliant minds to reveal how money and love and notions of power are twisted by human nature into all the extremes that add up to society; from marriage and motherhood to rape and murder. He said money was a key character in these novels, whether mentioned or not, accompanying every civilised individual throughout life, a kind of marriage, and that each individual’s ideas on money were reflections of their character, covering all the shades between good and evil. If they lost their money, or never had it in the first place then the essence of money still tainted their lives. The wealthy who chose to pretend they were above such base considerations as money were also tainted by it through their arrogance, hypocrisy and snobbery.

I was almost fourteen when Jean-Baptiste began giving me books on the secrets and techniques of human sexual fulfilment. The book list began with the distant ‘Perfumed Garden’ and ‘Karma Sutra’, then came slim volumes about preparatory meditations to the act of love, communication with the souls of the ancestors during extended intercourse, treatises on oriental lovemaking techniques: an overview of ancients; foreigners; adults. I felt distanced from them, I looked down on them all, faintly amused from my promontory of purity and youth. As I was not human I felt none of it would ever apply to me: these were indeed the strange habits of the adults of an alien species.

Then Jean-Baptiste brought me down to earth with informally written modern books that ironically seemed even more dated: ‘Everything you need to know about Sex’, ‘The Joy of Sex.’ What was I supposed to make of any of them? Surely these were also just the bizarre habits of some lost generation of alien species?

I hardly ever left the grounds of Bulmershe Park. I never went out alone until I was almost sixteen. From one day to the next I only ever had close dealings with Jean-Baptiste and Jennifer: sometimes I’d see her wealthy acquaintances and the Estate employees but always on home territory. Jennifer had no real friends of her own. I suppose she gave the impression that Jean-Baptiste was her employee, but with my in depth studies of human foibles I found enough clues in their subtle body language to form my own ideas of what past relationship they might have once enjoyed, though I really did not want to consider them still performing in the light of Jean-Baptiste’s books. But I had an idea they would not have been passive in their ancient passions.

Though I felt a great love for Jean-Baptiste, I did recognise it as a crush and really preferred my strangely detached romantic notion about the boy I might meet one day; I imagined him, I shaped and constructed him in my mind, an implausibly romantic two dimensional male; a work in progress. These notions contrasted with my horribly cruel attitudes to every actual male I saw: gardening contractors and maintenance men; every man except Jean-Baptiste.

Before Jean-Baptiste gave me ‘The Joy of Sex’ and similar volumes he made me promise to save myself until I was eighteen. I was sure, anyway, that my idealised romantic notion of a future lover would have nothing to do with such embarrassing intimacies. Jean-Baptiste said he didn’t want me to misuse anything I learned; he didn’t want me experimenting for myself too soon: some hope with the grotesque garden workers. He said it was knowledge I would need to protect myself and prepare myself for the real world and that I must promise him, for my dead mother’s sake, that I would remain a virgin until my eighteenth birthday.

But Jean-Baptiste struck a wrong chord attaching these notions to my dead mother; dead so long ago I had no memories of her at all; she’d be the last person I’d think of if I found my ideal lover and he tried to tempt me. How could I bind myself too tightly with a promise made for the sake of the unknown dead? I did promise Jean-Baptiste, but I added under my breath for my own sake: ‘I’ll stay a virgin, technically’, since I couldn’t know what situations might arise before I was eighteen, and I knew enough already to know that still left plenty of scope.

What if I met the man of my dreams and true love made me instantly lose all inhibitions and embarrassment? Surely, I thought, this must happen to every innocent girl when she finds true love, that must be the way you know for sure that it is true love, when inevitable, natural feelings overcome embarrassed inhibitions? I thought: nobody nice would ever have babies otherwise.

Jean-Baptiste had told me: ‘If you meet your chosen man before you are eighteen he will wait if he is worthy of you. If he will not wait then he is not worthy.’

Almost two years ago, about the time that Jean-Baptiste left my life, I met Toby and thought he was my chosen man. I never thought he was the absolute ideal, but faced with warm flesh and blood - a real person - and feeling for the first time surges of natural physical desire for a real person, I settled for him being as close as I was ever likely to get to a breathing ideal. But I am still a virgin, technically, and Toby has waited, begrudgingly, for my eighteenth birthday, and I realise now that he has waited for all the wrong reasons.

Perhaps I have kept him waiting for the wrong reasons too; I have this awful, neurotic, fear that something terrible will happen when I lose my virginity, and I don’t just mean the symbolic end of my childhood. Maybe it relates to my deep feeling that I am not human; what might happen if I were to consort with a different species, a mere human? I am sure now that Toby is not my chosen man, he is not worthy of me, human or not.

Toby was the first person to tell me I was beautiful. He said he loved my long, honey blond hair; my clear skin that tans so well, and my tall, slender but shapely figure. And of course, that he loved my face, my photogenic face, which is to say that I photograph incredibly well, suitably posed in good light I can look mesmeric, but I can also look rather unusual in real life, striking, certainly. I think I am sometimes strikingly beautiful but I know I am not pretty. I wouldn’t want to be pretty.

When I was four I came to live with Jennifer Charman in the main house on her country Estate, Bulmershe Park. When I was almost sixteen she let me move into the converted coach house where Francine once lived. Now I know that she is Jean-Baptiste’s daughter. Jennifer has a few photographs of Francine, the last one was of her aged seventeen, slim and dark haired, arrestingly beautiful as she captivated the photographer with her dangerous brown eyes. She must be in her thirties now.

Jennifer told me Francine used to sculpt. Jennifer indulged her and let her install a few unsettling art works in the grounds, installations made of bones, each numbered items in a series: ‘Beauty of Death’. After Francine left, and enough time had passed to suggest she wasn’t likely to return, Jennifer had all the installations removed, I suppose they were destroyed, or maybe she had the bones ground down as fertiliser for the Estate’s vegetable garden. Jennifer hates waste. But the models for Francine’s other ideas for bone sculptures stayed on in the coach house and they would have been removed too before I actually moved in, had I not seen them in the spare bedroom, become intrigued - one might almost say enchanted - and asked for them to be left.

There were complicated notes left in the room with the models, indicating the precise ratios for the dimensions: one note stated that absolute accuracy would be necessary for the finished work to be effective. Effective? The word effective suggested that she was after more than aesthetics with her creations.

From the notes I gathered that Francine used the tiny bones of shrews and mice and small birds at first, teased out from owl pellets to make her models. She bound the bones together with the finest brass wire to make architectural forms: tiny steep spires of splintered bones, ogee arches formed of tiny stacked skulls staring out to transfix the onlooker. They transfixed me anyway. I overlooked the serial death that had gone into the base material, and sometimes when I stared into them I had a fleeting glimpse of something beyond - beyond life I suppose, but beyond death too.

The next phase of models were larger: so she needed larger bones. She must have found a source beyond the innocent predation of the owl or the accidental road kill to have amassed so many bones of larger wild animals; badgers, foxes, and birds from gull size upwards. I do not know if she trapped or poisoned animals herself but it is clear from the notes Francine left that from the start she’d had in mind some vast horrific masterwork which she called the Bone Basilica and would need to find far larger bones.

I kept the models and the notes locked in my spare room along with my own most private possessions but I would often look at them, teeming with the essence of the vibrant creatures that created them; each bone evolved by the species to suit the precise purpose of survival and success in the wild. If I looked at the tiny bones I might visualise a weasel darting out across a road so fast it never seemed to touch the surface, or a buzzard hanging on a thermal then piercing downward to seize a shrew it spotted from a hundred metres high. If I cleared my mind and concentrated, hands held each side of a creation, I could feel myself swept up in the torrent of the wild world. By the time I moved into the coach house Francine was long gone and she never did communicate with Jennifer again after she left.

Jean-Baptiste went on:

‘Well, as to your father’s old house in Brittany, Le Manoir de Guillac, I have little use for it myself now. I live in a small cottage in the woods a few miles away from the Manoir, more practical, easier to heat. I’ve left some books behind. You might like to look at them again, might bring back memories of the place.’

‘How could it do that? Did I know you before my accident?’

‘Know me? Oh yes. You lived with me for a few years at Le Manoir de Guillac. That was where you had the accident.’

‘With you in France? Nobody ever said; you never - was my mother there with us too, my father - ?’

He patted the large brown envelope.

‘Read their stories.’

‘You say stories, are they fiction or truth?’

‘Each had their own version of reality. Don’t you remember anything about the old Manoir and the oak woods, the lake, the stream, the owls, the sparrow hawks that nested in the attic - the bees?’

I pondered: did any images come into focus? Elements from a thousand strange dreams hung in my mind, but too muddled and jumbled to link into anything meaningful. I shook my head, but I see now that Jean-Baptiste gave me these images as keys to begin unlocking my memory.

‘Well I’d better go before Jennifer or her other slaves discover me. I’m going back to France later this evening, night ferry, but if you want I can slip back and see you here before I go, maybe these writings will jog memories and we’ll discover some clue to your father’s disappearance.’

He took a huge iron key out of the briefcase.

‘Eighteen soon: the symbolic key of the door: the Manoir door in this case. It’s an ancient defensible Maison Fort, a far cry from the luxury you’re accustomed to here: no power or mains water, no central heating. An ancient ruined Breton Manoir, but you can make of it what you will if you need space to think. I’ll take you back there with me after your birthday if you want.’

‘I’d like that. Where is it, exactly?’

Jean-Baptiste took a map out of his briefcase, unfolded it on the table and pointed out where the Manoir was. I made him draw a circle round it.

‘Can I keep this map with the key?’

‘Certainly. But don’t get your hopes up about Chateau-style living, it is very small as Manoirs go, no fripperies; austere, fourteenth century. Nobody ever extended or embellished it. If you wanted to live there I could have it restored a little for you. Oh, but another thing before I go, thinking of your freedom: medication. I know you had to take medication after your accident, but you got over the epileptic fits. I know they gave you still more medication for years after, until I came to help you, for the other problems: the violence.’

‘What violence?’

‘You don’t remember the times - ?’

‘No, tell me.’

‘If you have no memory and Jennifer hasn’t mentioned it to you - ’

‘She hasn’t. What, what did I do?’

‘Memory loss is a blessing sometimes. I wish I could forget some things, many things, but you are still innocent. It wasn’t your fault.’

‘What wasn’t?’

‘It was the effect the accident had on you. We’ll leave it at that. And you were such a gifted child before; you could read so early, drew beautiful pictures, so eager to learn. But you’re almost whole again now, with your whole life ahead of you; adulthood, freedom, freedom from the past but when I talked with Jennifer on the phone she told me you’re back on medication again. I was most disappointed to hear that; depression again, is that true?’

‘It was her idea. I saw her doctor - not long after you left.’

‘You know I’d have been against it. Do you really want to be medicated forever?’

‘Not forever, but it helps with the - you used to help. But you went away.’

‘Filling your body with medicine, filling your mind - I don’t like the idea, do you? Experiment; when I take you back to Le Manoir de Guillac. I can keep an eye on you, give you the medication again if you want, but maybe I can help you cleanse your system yourself the way I did before, let you remember who you really are, what you really are.’

‘I don’t know - I’ll have to think about that.’

‘Well, I’ll see you this evening before I go, after dark. I’ll be back soon after anyway for your birthday, with Jennifer’s blessing. I’ll stay on for a few days then. We’ll have more time to talk. Just don’t rush into anything with this Toby.’

‘I won’t.’

Over the years I’ve had so many combinations of medication, not just early on to combat the risk of more epileptic fits after the accident, but I can remember terrible bouts of depression too; crippling, horrible periods of torment, and I would also see things no one else could see, hear things, until given more medication. Jean-Baptiste stopped all that when he came to help me. The depression held off, or was diverted, or maybe was re channelled into something else? But then Jean-Baptiste went away without a word, and it crept back on me in no time; an awful black wave of depression, in spite of Toby.

There was no way I’d ever have thought of stopping my medication if Jean-Baptiste hadn’t put the idea in my head. I only considered it then because I thought he could help magic it away again if need be, just like he used to do.

As soon as Jean-Baptiste went off I sat down and read through all the handwritten pages he’d given me; my parents’ writings. I sat down and read about their brief, unstable, lives together: my mother, Alexia Rogan, the architect; my father, George Charman, the property developer: united in madness to make me. To make me - what?

Chapter 2

NOVEMBER 7th 1985

(Written by ALEXIA ROGAN)

You were just a baby, Erin, when I took you by ferry to Cherbourg to see your father, George Charman, for the first time. I drove in the drizzle down through Normandy. By the time we reached Brittany the drizzle had turned to torrential rain, visibility was very poor. Muddy spray from lorries on the shiny roads made driving horrible. The wind buffeted the car on the open stretches but you slept all the way in your carry cot on the back seat.

I’d visited the Manoir once before, sixteen months earlier. I arrived then in the summer darkness but this time the winter weather was dreadful and I only found the track by sheer luck. I slowed to look at an owl waiting on a post in the twilight and saw a track that disappeared off through the trees. The track looked vaguely familiar in the gloom. I’d felt such excitement that one and only time before, when George drove me down the track to the Manoir, but that excitement dissolved away so soon into pain and anger.

As I drove down the track I felt the old anger against George rise up in me again: he’d ruined everything before and now, thanks to him, I was dragging our baby into the unknown on a dangerously stormy night.

I drove slowly following the winding track through the swaying trees. When I glimpsed water, the small arm of the lake, I knew for sure I’d found the Manoir. The track wound back in through the trees and I drove on until I found myself facing Le Manoir de Guillac again, shrouded in rain: a great dark mass of ancient granite masonry on the bank of the lake. All around were the oak woods.

Night was falling early with the storm. I drove in through the arched stone entrance to the yard. Slates from the roofs were scattered round the yard; grass sprouted from mud on the granite setts. One of the two huge oak front doors was open inwards: rain and leaves had been driven inside to form a matted puddle on the fired earth floor. The house looked so derelict and abandoned.

I left you asleep in the warm car and stood on the front steps. I called out for George through the open door. I called again three times before I ventured inside. The vast sitting room smelt of the damp old lime plaster. George’s only furnishings, a lone sofa and a huge threadbare rug, were patched with mould. I walked across that dank room into the room George had euphemistically once called the kitchen. The old stoneware sink was full of unwashed plates and mugs. George had crudely partitioned off two small rooms from the original kitchen. One had a single bed, neatly made and untouched. The other room was a dank windowless hole with mildew covered walls. George said he’d make a bathroom in that corner but there was still no mains water or electricity in the place. Water still had to be fetched from a spring. Cigarette butts littered the floor along with plastic bags full of rubbish.

George said we’d made enough money, he’d had enough of our business. He wanted to write and find himself so he went off to France and bought this derelict Manoir to restore. It looked to me that something had gone badly wrong after we broke up. Far from finding himself George had lost himself completely all alone there, and sank into deep disordered depression in the sixteen months since I’d left him.

I needed to find him before it was completely dark, before you woke up, Erin, and wanted feeding; before I froze or fell prey myself to the palpable depression of the place. I went up the spiral stone staircase to the bedroom where George and I slept the only night I ever spent with him in Le Manoir: the night you were conceived, Erin. Whatever happened after, I can tell you this: you were conceived with love that night before everything went wrong.

We’d slept on opened sleeping bags spread out on the floor but now George had a splendid antique oak double bed in the room. The duvet was crumpled on one side from the last time he’d thrown it back to crawl out: not recently by the look of it. It was covered in dust and an owl pellet was neatly perched on his pillow, as if delicately placed as a present for his return.

At least there was no sign of the woman, George clearly lived alone now in his Manoir. I went up the next flight of spiral stone stairs to the attic. Great wet patches stained the oak floor boards beneath slipped slates, but George was not in the house.

I rushed outside in the torrential rain and called out for him. I ran round the yard calling his name again and again but my voice disappeared into the darkness and the terrible roaring of the wind as the weather worsened. All around I could hear branches snap and crash down. Did I dare risk driving back along the track under those bending trees while the wind was so severe? The decision was made for me: even as I stared into the gloom. A sudden gust, far worse than the rest, brought a great branch down just a few metres into the track, barring the way. I heard other trees crash down in the woods beyond. It was almost dark by then and we were alone, you and I, trapped there for the night.

You were still sleeping soundly in the car, oblivious to the maelstrom outside. I found my torch. I hoped to find a saw. Surely George had a saw somewhere, maybe even a chain saw? Perhaps I could cut up the branch and get away, but then I realised there would be other branches down across the track, and the weather would make it unsafe to drive on in case more branches fell, and what would happen to you, Erin, if I was injured or even killed, with no sign of George and no one else knowing we were there? And even if I did get out of the track, what about all the trees along the roads all the way to the nearest hotel? The storm was surely exceptional, there might be far worse damage elsewhere, even flooding.

I went back in the house with my torch and found an oil lamp. Cut logs were piled by the big fireplace along with some kindling. I took some firewood into the kitchen for the stove. I still had the newspaper I’d read on the ferry. I found a lighter that worked and lit the oil lamp and, eventually, the stove. I had a few basics in the car: emergency food, rugs, bottled water, the wherewithal for a light supper and breakfast, also tea bags, coffee, long life milk and your food. I’d allowed for the possibility of George having no supplies whatsoever in his house but I had expected to find George. I’d tried telephoning a few times before I left but the calls were not answered so I just set off. After all: he’d only just called me out of the blue and invited me, but he could be excused for not waiting round every minute for me to arrive. He could also be trapped somewhere by fallen trees.

When the kitchen had warmed up a little I brought you in from the car. The stove stood well out into the room, the long stove pipe stretched back into the fireplace radiating heat. Some warmth even found its way into the