Ending with Beginnings

Gemma slid into the parish church just as the memorial service started and, quite unobtrusively, found herself a seat on one of the back pews, just inside the door. She soon regretted this, as the draught leaking through the door squashed all feeling from her feet. The service was long. Overly long in Gemma's opinion, she had always thought that funerals and all their associated events were best dealt with smoothly, efficiently and, above all, as quickly as possible, better for all concerned that way.

The priest, she pondered, seemed overly fond of the sound of his own voice. Mind you, by the looks of things, he was overly fond of the taste of his dinner as well. And someone really should have said something to him about that beard, most men look shifty when they have enough facial hair to shelter a small mammal and he was no exception. She fancied she could see him sweating under the heavy black robes.

After an interminably long time, the congregation began to file out of the church and Gemma sat and waited for them to leave, luxuriating in the emptying of the building. She had always liked empty churches: cool stone and mortar freed from dogma held a certain mystery. She made certain to catch Matt's eye, half-enjoying the shock of recognition and reddening of shame she provoked.

Alone at last, she paced up the aisle slowly, catching the heels of her palms on the worn oak pews and sliding her feet along the parquet flooring. When she reached the front row, she sat gently on the parquet, heels tucked underneath her, and closed her eyes. She imagined Kate on her death bed: saying goodbye, letting go but could not untangle regret from anger.

When she opened her eyes, a flicker of movement caught in the corner of her vision. She followed the movement to its source; a girl sitting on the other side of the church, a few rows back. Unremarkable looking, running towards plumpness in black jeans, head bent, mouse brown hair falling to the floor. She scrabbled on the floor for a few moments and then surfaced, tossing back her hair and meeting Gemma's eyes calmly.

'Kate.' The sound fell involuntarily from Gemma's lips. No mistaking whose daughter this was.

'Vicky' The girl smiled slowly, 'Kate's daughter. But then you'd guessed that. Come and help me get this lid off.'

Intrigued, Gemma got to her feet and crossed the aisle, to lean over the pew in front of Vicky, 'What is it?'

Vicky shrugged, 'I'm not really sure. A box of some kind. Mum wanted me to have it but I've got no idea what's inside. I found a couple of letters tucked into the lid under the covering.'

'It looks soft.' Gemma stretched out a hand to touch the box, 'Like velvet. But blacker than velvet has any right to be.'

Vicky slid the box across the floor into the aisle, 'We might need a bit of space, it seems a bit stiff.'

Old and young, they sat either side of the box, silently wondering. Gemma reached out again to run a finger across its surface, almost tentative, unsure what reaction this might provoke. Vicky watched quietly, 'It does that to you doesn't it. Makes you...'

'...want to touch it. Yes, it does rather. I wonder how old it is. Where did your mum get it from?'

'Dunno. Judging by the letters, I think it belonged to grandma.'

'Have you tried to open it then?'

Vicky slid a fingernail under the lid, 'No. Not really anyway. It sounds silly, but I didn't really want to open it on my own. Just in case. Well, just because I don't know what's inside I guess.'

'Open it now then.' Gemma's voice came out harsher than she had intended. She added, 'If you want to that is.'

'Yes.' Vicky hesitated, 'I think I will.'

The lid seemed to come off easily in the end, rising smoothly up from its hinges.

'What's in there then?' Gemma leaned forwards, girlish suddenly in anticipation. Vicky too leaned forward, struggling to see into a space that seemed impossibly dark. Their heads met over the box and both jerked back in embarrassment at their eagerness. Vicky reached inside the box and drew out an object, wrapped in layers of fine black material, woven and worn thin with age.

She set the bundle down on the parquet floor with a clatter, 'It almost seems a shame to unwrap it but...'

'But you want to know what's inside there. Me too, come on, I'm going to die of suspense if you keep this up.'

Vicky let a nervous giggle escape from her throat, 'Sorry, I'm being an idiot aren't I? Suppose I'd better be careful with it though, God knows what's actually inside. Probably something really boring after all this messing around.'

She gently peeled the outer cloth layer back onto the floor. Four more layers followed the first, lying as thin as tissue, revealing a layer of heavier weight material, black again and fastened together by a row of tiny hooks and eyes that glinted copper in the lights. Vicky ran a finger along the hooks, 'Looks fiddly to me. Give us a hand will you? I'm so clumsy I'll likely rip these right out of the cloth and that'd be a shame, it probably took some poor bugger ages to sew them in.'

'OK, but you'll have to keep out of the light. It's hard enough to see in here as it is, they keep the lights so dim and I must be getting old, my eyesight's not as good as it used to be.' Gemma started to unpick the hooks, one by one, 'Good job I didn't cut my nails this morning, we'd have had no chance then. Whatever it is, your mother, or grandmother, or whoever, certainly didn't want this to be easy to get into.'

Waiting impatiently, Vicky sat back on her heels, rocking slightly back and forth, 'Nearly done?'

'Almost there. It'd be quicker mind you if you didn't keep leaning into the light. I can't see a bleedin' thing.'

'Sorry.' Vicky sat back and began to play with her fingernails absent-mindedly. 'It must be something important, mum said she wasn't sure whether  to give it to me or not. I wonder why she didn't mention it before she died?'

'Dunno.' Gemma paused and looked up, 'How are you coping with all that anyway? Must be difficult.'

Vicky began to rock again, gently, 'OK, I think. I mean, it's been coming for a while, hasn't it? We all knew, even before she accepted it herself. And she was so ill in the last few weeks. It was like she was already gone. All the important bits anyway, leaving just a kind of shell that refused to let go. It sounds terrible but mostly I think I feel relieved. For her. For me too'

'Well, that's understandable' Gemma leaned back over the wrappings, 'It all happens so fast when they do finally let go that you hardly have time to work out what you think, do you? There we go - that's the last one. Do you want to do the honours?'

'OK.' Vicky swallowed and drew the material apart, revealing a roll of thick, flexible material. 'What is it? It feels kind of sticky and almost stiff.'

'Unroll it and let's see.'

Vicky unrolled the long oblong onto the floor, 'Touch this side, it feels tacky, like it should be stuck to something. Maybe we've got it upside down.'

'What's on the other side then?' Gemma peeled the edge of the oblong up, 'Wow. I think you're right, look at the colours on that. Reminds me of the butterfly wings my grandad used to collect. Looks like it might be a tapestry of some kind.'

'It feels red to me.'

'Feels?' Gemma cocked an eyebrow.

'Yes,' hesitant now, Vicky peeled back a larger swathe and flipped the material over, sticky side down, 'It looks black to me, but it feels red. It feels so hot and stuffy and aggressive. Like it wants something.'

'What on earth would a piece of material want? If it's a tapestry of some sort, it might stick to the wall.' Gemma picked up the material and carried it over to the nearest wall, 'God it feels heavy. What's it made of, lead? There, it does stick.' She paced back towards th wrappings, still watching the tapestry.

Vicky wandered over tot he wall and leaned in towards the tapestry, almost close enough to touch, 'I can see purple now. And something swirling maybe. Fabulous isn't it?'

'I wonder if there was anything else in the wrappings?' Gemma turned around and went back to rummage through the box, 'Look, here's something, like a hand-mirror.'

Vicky could see Gemma's reflection faintly in the tapestry, wobbling in the distance, but found it hard to hear her. She shook her head, trying to clear her ears and saw Gemma turn, something glinting in her hand, coming closer and closer.

Gemma walked back towards Vicky, mirror in hand, 'Look, pretty isn't it? Solid wood and there are some beautiful patterns carved into the handle.' She held the hand-mirror out towards Vicky, face first.

Vicky snapped rigid as the mirrors approached each other, trapped between two reflections. She saw herself reflected inside the tapestry, saw also the mirror in Gemma's hand, with a reflection of her and a reflection of the tapestry. In that reflection of her tapestry she could see herself mirrored, staring wide-eyed, her image bouncing back and forth between the mirrors, coiling and writhing, duplicate after duplicate appearing beyond the point at which her brain told her eyes they were seeing lies. Still the images proliferated, tumbling her on top of herself, under herself, crushed by her own image.

Gemma stood behind Vicky, mesmerised by the tapestry, she could see no reflections, just colours in perpetual motion, insubstantial as smoke. Neither was she aware of the link between the mirror and the tapestry, could not see that Vicky was trapped between the two.

Vicky span and span, leaveing Gemma behind, dizzy and overwhelmed by nausea until, suddenly, the images snapped still and flipped out of her plane of vision, leaving her alone. Alone, in a space that was dark and cold and truly, truly empty. She remembered, in that instant, her mother's yearning for peace and quiet and it tore a whimper from her, 'Not like this. Not like this in the dark.'

At that she felt the touch of a hand, skin cool and dry, 'At any price?'

'Gemma?'

Laughter. 'Gemma is not here, see.' And Vicky saw, as if from a great height, Gemma standing behind another person that must have been herself yet did not seem familiar. She could see the glinting of the mirror in Gemma's and hand and the tug of the tapestry. 'Is Gemma?'

'Stuck? No, unlike you she is not standing between two mirrors. Did your mother never tell you not to do that? But of course she didn't, we wouldn't be here if she had. Do you feel fear? Alone in the dark.'

'Yes. Can you help me? I'll pay the price.'

The voice came again, crackling in her ear, 'Your mother said you would agree. Your grandmother was a rather harder nut to crack my dear. Fought like a bitch, she did, but she came round in the end.'

Vicky gasped, 'You've spoken to...'

'Your mother? Yes dear, that's what I implied, wasn't it? Now don't be slow, we don't have all the time in the world you know. This was much easier in India, they prepare people rather better over there.'

'My grandmother went...'

'To India. Yes, we both know that dear. Keep up. Where else did you think the box came from?'

'Did you know my grandmother then?'

'In a manner of speaking dear, in a manner of speaking. Come on, we're repeating ouselves here. Now hold still, this will hurt.'

What will?'

'A lot.'

The touch disappeared and the pictures came whirling back. And it hurt. Spiked through her spine and skull. The images squashed her slowly back into blackness, whirling on the edge of a huge space. Then, Vicky slowly became aware of warmth and fluid, a heartbeat other than her own and a cord joining her to that warmth and beating. Conscious too of another pair of heartbeats she floated, content.

Then it changed. Spasms, sped through her, pushed her out into a cold, bright world where she was clothed and fed, left to cry, sang to, ignored, played with. A world where one mother died and another died inside. Years flashed through her and settled into sediment, filling her gut, ribcage, skull and bones with memories. Memories of the distaff line, made wrong by another's perspective.

Underneath it all lay faint memories of the baking heat, of India - memories totally alien to her and fainter laughter, overridden by the stronger impulses of mother and grandmother. Vicky remembers it all. They try and talk to her: her mother and grandmother. Try to explain, to impose their wills, to tell her what will and will not be.

She fights. Pushes them down. She remembers her grandmother telling her mother that she would dream of black velvet. Vicky sees a sky of black velvet above and below her and gathers it around her, wrapping the memories of grandmother and mother, binding them tight as she may and hiding them deep as she can. As she does she can hear Indian laughing, a faint sense of triumph and fainter sense of approval.

A crunch, Vicky fell back into her own senses. Gemma shook her gently by the shoulders, 'Are you ok? You looked like you were away with the fairies for a moment there.  I dropped the hand mirror, it got really hot for some reason - I don't think I've broken it though. What on earth did you see in that thing? Something I can't for sure.'

Vicky shuddered, aware of Gemma's incomprehension, 'Everything.'