The Glass Madonna

This time he was certain he heard a noise. Throwing on his dressing-gown, he ran out into the dark corridor. Emily's bedroom door stood wide open. His heart throbbed with sudden fear. Peering in, he saw the bed was empty, the covers thrown back as if in haste. Was she in the bathroom, perhaps? If not - where was she? Now he was wide awake, straining his ears for noises, his mind alive and whirling with old anxieties. Earlier that day he'd received a text message from Barnaby Inchbold asking him to go to Crete on a dig. The message replayed in his mind like a tape. It had played all day and now came back to taunt and frustrate him with its possibilities. But he had his daughter, Emily, to think of. Yes, it was true that she was eighteen years old, an adult in the eyes of the law, yet he was still afraid of leaving her alone. Especially since she had taken to sleepwalking again and it was a full moon tonight. Sometimes some annoying obstacle would wake her from those somnambulistic depths as she toured the house on some strange mission of her own. And he knew it was a shock for her to wake up and find herself anywhere but in her bed. He was always listening, even in his sleep, and there were nights when he heard her sobbing and would go and console her. It wasn't fear that made her sob so bitterly. It was longing. She always seemed to think she was in a bigger space, a vast place full of light, she said. She wanted to be there; she wanted to die. He wanted to go away too, wanted to be elsewhere - but not in Emily's place of light. In a Minoan palace on Crete, that would do beautifully. It was then he heard the unmistakable sound of someone downstairs in the kitchen. Switching on the landing light, Martin ran down three steps at a time, yet feeling as if his feet had turned to lead, his progress as slow as a film played at half speed. With each step his anxiety grew. Anne just wouldn't let Emily go, would she? She kept calling her from somewhere, pulling the girl towards her from beyond the grave. 'Anne, let her alone! Why are you haunting us like this?' He uttered the words aloud like some demented being as his feet carried him down with an interminable slowness. Bloody hell. Now he was talking to a ghost. The lower floor rested in the quiet, empty darkness of the early hours. The kitchen door was half shut and he heard again the soft sound of bare feet on the tiled floor, the shuffling of objects, then a drawer being opened. Someone began to draw the bolts of the heavy wooden door that led out to the garden. Martin flung back the door of the kitchen and switched on the light. There stood Emily holding a pair of large, ugly-looking scissors in her hand, the back door swung wide open. She held the scissors against her chest as if about to plunge them into her heart. He yelped in terror and flung himself towards her, wrenching the scissors from her hand and flinging them across the room. 'Emily! What the hell are you doing?' He could have bitten off his tongue. He knew he shouldn't wake her up like this, but he was shocked. He stood frozen, thought suspended, taken over by heart-hitting fear. The young girl turned round, her eyes blank. Then consciousness returned like a sudden light and she awoke, blue eyes opening wide with terror. She began to scream, piercing the deep silence with her howl of anguish. He held her tight against him and tried to calm her down. 'Emily, Emily . . . it's all right. It's Dad here . . . it's your dad.' Feet rattling down the stairs. David stood in the doorway and regarded the scene, half sleepy still, his eyes blinking in the light. 'Bloody hell, Dad, what's going on? I thought someone was being murdered.' Emily was quieter now, sobbing and shaking against Martin's chest, her arms clinging to him like a drowning soul. His own heart still hammered against his chest with shock. At this rate he'd soon be following Anne to the grave. He looked up at his son, who stared at them both in alarm. 'It's okay, David, it's okay. I woke Emily too soon. She's terrified, poor thing.' David surveyed his sister half in exasperation, half with pity, 'I should think she is, barefoot in the middle of the bloody night and in the kitchen. She's messed about like this for months now.' 'It's not her fault.' 'Why did you wake her, anyway? Why didn't you just take her back to bed?' Martin pointed to the scissors that had skittered across the floor, ending up in a corner by the gas stove. 'She was holding those, no idea why. I thought she was . . . I thought . . .' he couldn't even bring himself to say the words. 'She just wants attention, Dad.' David was tired of being sympathetic. Emily pulled herself away a little and stared at the scissors, stretching out an arm as if to retrieve them. David picked them up and put them back in the drawer. 'I want them,' she said. Her eyes were still strange, the deep blue glassy and clouded as if a film had come over them. 'Well, you can't have them,' her brother replied, 'what the hell d'you want them for, anyway?' 'I was going into the garden,' she said. Her voice was neutral, calm. It made the words all the more startling to her listeners. 'To cut some flowers for Mum. She said she wanted me to bring her flowers, to cut her some of the Peace roses. She loves the colours, the pinky tinge on the yellow petals. She wants to see them again.' Martin and David looked at one another, speechless. 'Mum ... wanted some roses,' David repeated, his tone flat and disbelieving. Emily nodded fiercely. 'She misses her roses. I have to get her some.' She struggled to free herself from her father's arms but he held her to him gently. 'Darling,' he said, 'you know you can't give Mum roses. The roses aren't even in bloom yet. But we can buy some later on and put them on her grave if you like. Would you like to do that?' She looked him full in the face now and the film dissipated. Her eyes deepened their blue and she suddenly seemed to return to proper awareness. 'Dad! - oh Dad - what am I doing here? Where am I?' 'Safe, angel, safe with me and David.' 'I did see Mum,' she said, 'I saw her standing by my door and she looked so lovely. She looked so lovely, Dad. She asked me to get her some roses, so I came down here.' 'It was a dream, darling, just a dream. Don't worry about it. It's all fine. David, make us all a cup of hot chocolate, will you?' David grudgingly boiled up milk while Emily sat at the kitchen table, her father beside her patting her hand. 'She keeps saying she sees Mum in this other place that's a bit like our house,' David whispered to his father when he came over with the cups of hot chocolate. 'Says Mum's really happy there.' Emily had described the room she saw in detail. It was weird. Martin knew that his son a young man without any kind of interest in so called 'spiritual' stuff, didn't want to believe. David always laughed. He despised the weak-minded, superstitious people who read up their horoscopes, talked about wicca, solstices and all that dark art stuff and read Tolkien and Pullman. People who wanted to believe that there was something there pulling the strings and making things happen. It made them feel happy to think someone was in charge, like their parents once were. Why would anyone want to believe that? It was all chance and meaninglessness. The world wasn't flat, either. 'Shhh ... ' said Martin, looking over at Emily but her eyes were dreamy, her blue glance in another world again. 'She's gone weird, Dad. What we going to do about it?' 'Nothing. She'll get over it.' 'But maybe we should do something. Someone must be able to help her.' 'You know how I feel about shrinks. They do more harm than good. There's no way I'm sending her to some stranger who will totally frighten and confuse her, tell her she was abused when she was three or some such rubbish. Those people twist minds, they don't straighten them.' 'But Dad ... 'No, David. I hate labelling people as if they are specimens in a jar. Autism, bi-polar, paranoia, depression .... no use giving them fancy modern names, they're still labels. Everyone has these emotional hang-ups deep inside them. Emily lives very close to the edge, but she's not crazy.' David regarded his father with exasperation. 'No,' he said, 'it's just that you don't want her to grow up. You don't, do you? You want Emily a sweet kid forever because she reminds you of Mum and you've lost Mum.' Martin was angry now. 'Don't you start on me with this crap! I don't need your interference as well as my do-gooder sister breathing down my neck. I need your support. You know how I feel about it. All this ...' he indicated his daughter still sitting at the table with a vacant look, 'is just a reaction to her mother's death. She'll grow out of it.' 'Mum died two years ago!' 'I know. And Emily has stopped sleepwalking for some time now. I don't know what set her off again. I just don't know.' David shrugged a little and turned away to find an empty cup for himself. 'No bloody peace in this house,' he muttered under his breath, 'no wonder Mum wanted Peace roses in the garden.' Martin shook his head, despairing at his son's lack of understanding. He looked at Emily as she sat in her white cotton pyjamas at the table, soft, curly blonde hair tangled with sleep and a face like that of a sweet, small child. Nobody would think she was eighteen and a perfectly intelligent, if not brilliant young woman. She looked about fourteen just now, all mussed up like a baby. Had it been a dream or had Emily really seen Anne? She'd got up and walked round the house like this before and they'd found her talking to someone and she always said it was Mum. 'I wish I had a normal sister,' David murmured aloud. He looked aggrieved. 'Sometimes I wonder if she'll ever grow up, Dad. She's spooky. I know she doesn't tell lies, I don't think she knows how to. It makes it even spookier.' He took over his mug of warmed milk with its thick lacing of chocolate powder. They all sat round the table as if it was a tea party. 'It's bloody four in the morning!' David said in disgust. 'Doesn't anybody realise I have a dissertation later on today at the unholy hour of nine o'clock? No point in going back to bed.' 'Never mind, David,' said his father, 'you can sleep on the bus. You'll survive.' 'Oh, thanks a lot!' 'I'm not supposed to drink anything at night,' said Emily suddenly. She sounded quite normal now. 'Oh, what the hell! It's soothing and relaxing. You won't walk out of bed again, sweetheart.' Martin tried to smile. 'You've done your bit for the night.' Later, Martin popped his head round the door of Emily's room. She raised her head and stared at him. 'Dad,' whispered Emily, 'are you there or am I still asleep?' Her father smiled and came over to the bed, sitting on it and taking her hand affectionately. 'I'm here, solid as a lump of rock . . . I'm not a dream, I promise.' He smiled and made himself sound cheerful, but felt troubled. The light from the landing showed a young gentle, fragile woman-child. He was afraid for her. What could life hold for a girl so sensitive and strange in the eyes of others? He brushed the strands of her fair tousled hair from her face. Emily held his hand tight for a moment, then Martin kissed his daughter on the cheek and pulled the duvet about her to keep her warm. As he left, Emily said sleepily, 'Don't forget to bolt the back door, Dad.' 'I won't,' he promised and turned off the landing light. When Martin had left and shut the door behind him, Emily lay back in bed and closed her eyes. She had not sleepwalked for over a year now. Before her mother's funeral, she had insisted on drawing back the sheet and looking upon Anne's peaceful but emaciated face. At the time she had looked at that still face in utter silence, no tears, no words, no reaction. Then a few days later, she began to walk in her sleep. 'You can't put her in the dark,' she said, 'she wants to be in her garden.' As she lay now in the early morning gloom, she thought of Mum's garden full of roses and her mother walking in that garden, gleaming with light and love. Part of her wanted to be there with her and part here with her father in the 'normal' world. Which world was the real one? 'Don't come to me again tonight, Mum,' she whispered, 'let me sleep. Let me not be a worry to Dad and David.' She drifted off again and in her dream she saw herself approaching a pitch black place, a cave perhaps, an impression of being underground and not in the bright upper world she understood. Yet she felt no fear at all. It was as if something beautiful and indescribable lay ahead that pulled her towards it. Her heart expanded with joy. But she knew, she knew with a sudden jolt of certainty, that behind her lay a brooding, frightening presence that meant to harm her and those she loved.