Wild Wood (2 page)

No.

Face it.

Ah. Of course. The inner voice.

But Jesse doesn’t want to
face
whatever is brewing between her ears. Too much facing of things lately. Way too much.

She shrugs. And almost screams. In that giddy moment, vomit fills her mouth.

Breathe deep! Deeper. Head down. Go on.

As the trees, at last, regain their proper places in the sky, Jesse sighs. Sun is coming from somewhere.

But she can’t allow herself to rest.

Very, very carefully, she opens her bag with the good arm and finds it. She stares at the thing in her hand. It doesn’t look like a bomb. It looks innocent. Public-service beige, her name on the front: Jesse Marley. It’s the one she’s used to. Maybe that’s good.

Is it hard to open an envelope? Sometimes. Today it’s impossible.

Jesse puts it back in the bag.

Wedged into a corner of the cloisters is a café. The Brits would call it a tearoom, wouldn’t they? So, yes, let there be . . .

“Tea?” The girl behind the counter has a pleasant face. Not especially pretty—in fact, not pretty at all—but her skin is beautiful, clear, bright, and soft. Only the English or the Irish seem to win the skin lottery. All that water in the air? Must be.

But another asset surrounds that plain face: tawny hair that swings in a mass when the girl moves her head.

“Can you make an espresso?” Jesse smiles without hope.

Those sincerely apologetic eyes. “I’m so awfully sorry, we only do instant.”

What is this place?
Does no one know how to make coffee in London? It’s 1981! Jesse doesn’t let it show; she shakes her head politely. “Tea’s fine. Really.” She doesn’t ask what it is. There’s no point. Tea’s tea in England.

“Help yourself to a table. Would you like something to eat?” She has a name badge, this gracious waitress:
ALICIA
.

Not wanting to stare, Jesse looks away.

Alicia. So English. Such an educated voice too. A class marker, that voice. This girl might be working in a café, but she comes from somewhere, went to a “good” school. Plainly.

“Is that an Eccles cake?”

Don’t buy it.

But Alicia provides permission—encouragement, even. “I’ll bring it with the tea. Everyone needs a little treat.” Her smile matches the skin. Flawless teeth decorate her mouth, and her eyes twinkle nicely. Very un-English.

Jesse warms to Alicia. She might be all class, but she’s also endearing. Does endearing get you further than good legs? Probably not. Maybe. But you’d have to work harder.

Jesse sighs. Once, she’d been so sure of herself, so gregarious. Confident, even. Now all she wants is a table on her own. And she’d like to be invisible while she licks her wounds—the psychic ones—and reads the letter.

A table at the far end of the café has a view of the garden. Jesse sits with great care, her back to the few customers, but it’s hard to take the bag off her shoulder. Somehow she eases out of the jacket too. She’s feeling hot.

Alicia follows her. She puts a small china teapot on the table, a matching cup and saucer, and what might possibly be a silver jug of milk—and even a strainer in its own little bowl. Last, the plate with the treat. Tea and cakes. The British gift to civilization. “It looks very nice.”

The girl seems pleased. “Let me know if I can get you anything else. It’s no trouble.” One quick glance from the waitress as she
goes back to the counter lets Jesse know her disheveled appearance has been noted. Noted, but perhaps not judged. Not that kind of a girl, Alicia, not toffee-nosed; in fact, she looks kind, full stop.

Jesse stares down at her cup. She sips. Fragrant and really hot. Really delicious as well. And the Eccles cake. As promised, sensational. Currants, sugar, butter. Comprehensive sin. But God is just beyond the cloister, so that’s all right.

Jesse closes her eyes to savor the tastes.

So, feeling better?

Jesse jumps. “Sorry?”

The waitress is beside her. “Pardon?” She’s mopping crumbs that somehow leapt off the plate.

“Did you say something?” Jesse’s confused.

The girl smiles. “No. Would you like anything else?” She nods at the empty plate.

“A new life would be good.” Jesse would grin, but her face is hurting. And her head.

“You’ve come to the right place, then.” A final swipe and that lovely smile.

“What?” Jesse stares.

Alicia nods. “I’d talk to Rahere. He’s a very good listener.” The girl tilts her head toward the entrance to the church.

Jesse smiles uncertainly. “Oh. Well, might go and introduce myself.”

“He’s always there, day and night. You’ll find him by the altar.”

“Rahere. Is that a first name?”

“Yes. Well, first and last together.” The waitress picks up the tray. “Finished?”

As Jesse’s fingers dance on the tabletop—nerves—she mentally counts through the meager stock of coins and notes in her wallet. She’s still got to pay for the hostel, cheap as it is, and if she’s going north, she’ll use up what’s left; maybe she’ll get a temp job somewhere to cover costs. Absolutely, definitely, she shouldn’t have had the cake. “How much do I owe you?”

“One pound and seventy-five pence.”

Jesse scrapes back her chair and goes to the counter. “Is Rahere the pastor here—the, um, vicar?”

Alicia seems less plain with each smile. “No. He’s the founder of the church. And the hospital.”

Awkwardly, Jesse counts the coins with her left hand. “The founder?” She picks up a brochure on the counter. “But the church is over nine hundred years old, right?”

“It’s his tomb you want.” Alicia makes little shooing motions.

Jesse doesn’t even blink.
Advice from the dead, recommended by a stranger.
That fits.

The great church is empty. A tiered rack for votive candles is in a side chapel. It might be blasphemous if you no longer believe, but Jesse puts ten pence in the tin and lights a taper anyway.

The rap of her heels disturbs the hush as she looks for Rahere’s tomb. It lies in a wall niche, and the face and hands of his effigy are glazed a tanned pink while his head rests on a red pillow with gold tassels. His robe, so crisply carved, is shiny black. He has company too—a crowned angel holds up a heraldic shield at his feet.

Favoring her damaged shoulder, Jesse sits in a chair across from the tomb and scans the brochure.
It says here you were known to be cheerful, Rahere. That you liked helping people.
She stares at the effigy.
So, can I ask you for that—just to be cheerful while I sort this mess out? I don’t want to be bitter. I don’t want to be angry. I just want to know.

Jesse’s eyes fill. She sniffs; manages to rub one eye and then the other. As if she’s got something stuck.

She’s avoided grief for some time now, pushed it down, closed the lid on that box and locked it up. Now, like an idiot, she’s allowed misery to jump out and sock her right in the eye.

There’s only one thing to do; she knows it. Reaching into her
bag, she takes the envelope out, rips the top, and unfolds the birth certificate.

The details.

Child: female. Name: Jesse Mary. Date of Birth: 1st August 1956.

She stares at Rahere.
Does this feel like betrayal to you? It does to me.
Her birthday’s always been celebrated on October 3.

Jesse keeps reading.
Place of Birth: Jedburgh, Berwickshire.

Mother’s Name: Eva Green.

Date of Birth
:
13th March 1940.

Occupation:
blank.

Father: unknown.

Something hits in Jesse’s chest, hard as a fist.

No father?

In that moment she’s certain she will choke. But. She doesn’t.

There’s a word,
Informant
, with a signature beside it.

Jesse makes herself look at it. Anything to avoid the other information. Peering, she can see a woman’s name—it’s hard to read—and there’s an abbreviation at the front of it:
Sr.
Her finger traces the name.
Mary Joseph.
And beside the last name—
Magdalene
?—there’s a cross inscribed.

At least the address is clear:
Holly House, Priorsgate, Jedburgh, Berwickshire, Scotland
.

Jesse stares. She’s Scottish? She’s been told she was born in Durham.

Date of registration: 23rd October 1956.

In Sydney, when she went to apply for her passport, that registration date was the first clue that something was wrong. She’d handed over what she thought was her birth certificate, the one she’d found in her mother’s—no, her
adoptive
mother’s—desk in their house in Crows Nest, and they’d queried the date her birth had been registered; turned out, October 1956 was months after she’d actually been born, according to British records. That happened, sometimes, in cases of informal adoption
between family members. It was a way of fudging the actual date of birth.

Conclusion? She’d handed over a falsified birth certificate.

The irony was, Jesse was getting her first adult passport as a surprise for her parents. A nice one. She’d saved for two years after university earning crap money and working two jobs—typing for a solicitor during the day, cleaning at night—because she so,
so
wanted to go to England in the summer and see the place she was born for real. And then Charles and Di got engaged.

Her friends all laughed, but Jesse didn’t care. She just wanted to stand on a London street and see them pass by. Be a part of living history, part of their fairy tale—the prince and his virgin bride.

Her parents had never been keen on Jesse’s traveling by herself, and she thought she’d understood the reason—a girl, all alone, out in the big world. So she’d meant to get her passport and say to Janet and Malcolm, “Come with me! Let’s all go home together and be there for the wedding. My treat.”

But there’d been no ticket for her mum and dad. Because they weren’t her mum and dad.

In Sydney, the woman Jesse called Mum had slammed her bedroom door and cried all day behind it when Jesse even tried to ask that loaded question:
Who am I?

Malcolm, her father, shook his head when she trapped him in the kitchen. “I knew this day would come. I warned your mother so.”

And he’d walked out of the house. Jesse knew he’d gone to the pub; a nearly silent man, he always went there when her mum asked too much of him. Which was often, in his terms.

When she was past teenage sulking, Jesse had wondered sometimes if her parents’ marriage was actually happy. They organized their lives in the length of the pauses between the careful words they spoke to each other, and in what was
not
said in Jesse’s hearing. After she was about nine years old, Jesse knew
that something was being managed between the two—between all three of them—in that quiet house. And she’d not understood what it was.

Now she does.

And here it is. Her real birth certificate, picked up fresh today on this far side of the world. The actual object. The thing that proves who she is. A bastard child. Jesse stares at the paper in her hand. It feels as if she can see right through to the other side, as if her eyes were scalpels slicing truth to strips of nothing.

She touches the letters on the page.

This is her mother’s name. Her actual mother. Eva Green.

Why did you give me away, Mum?

That does it. Tears drip, and when Jesse bends her head, they’re a torrent she can’t stop.

She tries to stifle the sound but she can’t bear this. The pain. All kinds of pain.

It’s a while before she wipes her face one-handed.
Stand up. Come on. Sitting here will solve nothing.

Cruel, but fair. “You’re right.”

Holding to the back of the chair in front, Jesse stands. She’s done sniveling, she’s done feeling sorry for herself, and she’ll ignore the shoulder too. But she chews her bottom lip. That’s a habit when she worries.

Is it something you do, Mum?

Maybe she’ll skip the hospital, go to a pharmacist and get a painkiller. Then she’ll go back to the hostel and sleep; tomorrow will be better. She’ll
make
it better because she’ll find a library and scour what they have about Jedburgh. And libraries have telephone books. She can look up everyone called Green in Scotland. And she’ll ring them all.

That’s a decision. And a plan.

“There you are.”

Jesse has her hand on the door to the outer porch of St. Bartholomew.

“You left this?” The waitress holds out Jesse’s jacket. “Too pretty to lose, but I didn’t want to disturb you in the church.” Alicia smiles warmly.

“Thanks.” Half turned away, Jesse’s hiding her face. But she fumbles the handover and her bag drops to the floor. Out spill far too many things, including the birth certificate.

“Let me.” The waitress bobs down. Jesse drops too, just as Alicia stands. Their skulls connect.

Jesse’s knocked back on her shoulder as she falls. She can’t breathe and the vault reels above her head.