Freya's Quest Read online

  She struggled to her feet, brushing off the dust. ‘Well, Freya. What do you think?’

  Having surveyed her beautiful body, scarred by what she had recently done, I couldn’t find the words to answer.

  There were also poorly applied tattoos on her upper arms, crude motifs with the name “Judd” appearing on both. Her forearms were a mass of fresh razor-blade cuts.

  ‘What else did you do to upset Dylan so much?’

  ‘I showed him this,’ she replied, with a mischievous grin, lifting up the front of her skirt.

  I looked between her legs in disbelief. She had several piercings here as well. She had also had her pubic hair dyed bright green; and tattooed on her skin directly above this area was the caption:

  KEEP OFF THE GRASS

  She pulled her skirt back down and grimaced. ‘I had to show him. He was angry. Threw me to the ground.’

  ‘I’m not surprised! You don’t do things by halves, do you?’

  ‘No. But it had to be extreme. It was the only way to be free of him.’

  ‘I don’t understand?’

  ‘Well, let me put it this way. He’s tried to groom me into a new Sera, just like Mum. I can’t take it any more. Now I’ve shattered the image, I can go for good. He won’t try to follow me now.’

  She kissed me and gave me a hug. ‘I wish you well. But be careful.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Please go, now. Judd will be waiting.’

  I said my farewells. She followed me down the hillside. I turned to see her in the arms of the giant-man, then walked off to find Dylan.

  I found him on the riverbank, his eyes cast upon the eddying waters.

  He betrayed no hint of emotion.

  And he remained reticent as we walked back to the Land Rover.

  - XIII -

  DYLAN GRIPPED THE steering wheel, staring with intensity, yet his face devoid of all expression. He did not seem to be concentrating on the road. He was lost in his own world. This frightened me, as he had floored the accelerator from the moment he’d pulled away from the Grange bridge and had kept it there ever since, despite the twisting nature of the route.

  ‘Slow down, Dylan. For Christ’s sake, slow down!’ I screamed, as he veered the Land Rover over to the wrong side of the road.

  He did not respond. Instead, he maintained his rigid, zombie-like state.

  ‘Dylan, come on! You’re worrying me now.’

  Still he continued, even more reckless than before.

  I waved my hands in front of his face and tugged at the sleeve of his coat.

  He shot a glance at me. A haunted, wild glance. A glance which became a sustained stare that pierced right through me.

  I was silenced and he ostensibly returned his attention to the road ahead.

  A car, swerving to avoid us, honking its horn in fury, was enough to make me act once more. I unclipped my seat belt and hauled myself into his lap. I rammed my foot down on the brake pedal, and tried to yank up the handbrake.

  I felt the whole vehicle shudder, then skew sideways.

  Dylan let the steering freewheel.

  There was a great thud and the caving in of glass on my side. I was hurled across his lap, then down over his legs into the footwell.

  The impact broke Dylan’s trance.

  He screamed. I could feel his legs struggling to work the pedals under my weight. His hands were also back on the steering wheel, fighting to regain control.

  Luckily, the Land Rover was brought to a stop without further damage.

  I lay motionless for a while, feeling blood trickling down my face.

  ‘What the fuck’s got into you! You could’ve killed us!’ He was yelling at me, as if he had no recollection of his foolhardy behaviour.

  He lifted me up and placed me back upon my seat. I clutched at my head, feeling nauseous.

  ‘It was you, you fool. Not me!’

  He sat back, gasping for air, his face drained of all colour. ‘I don’t remember.’

  As I recovered, I was filled with anger. I opened the door and stepped outside. I couldn’t say what I might’ve done if I’d stayed in the cab.

  I paced up and down, still holding my head, surveying the damage to the vehicle. The panels had received a battering, although the tree in the hedge had come off worse with huge gouges through its bark. I checked all four wheels, then opened the driver’s door.

  ‘Budge over. I’m driving.’

  Dylan responded meekly, doing as he was told without comment.

  I wiped the blood from my face with the front of my T-shirt, collected myself together and started the vehicle. I drove off, slowly at first, listening for any signs of damage. Apart from the passenger door rattling, my confidence rose as there appeared to be nothing else to worry about.

  I’m not sure how I managed to navigate the vehicle successfully to the old mill. I can only remember arriving there and stumbling into the arms of one of Dylan’s mechanics.

  Dylan walked off towards the mill house, oblivious to my plight.

  Veronica came out of the door, looking concerned. She extended her arms to greet Dylan, but he simply barged past her. ‘Get the fuck out of my way!’

  The front door slammed.

  As Veronica came over to me instead, the lounge window shattered and a chair clattered over the courtyard cobbles. A few china ornaments soon followed.

  Veronica ordered the mechanic to find his workmate and together they headed into the house.

  I could hear raised voices from inside.

  ‘Don’t worry, pet. He’s just having one of his moods.’ Veronica’s words didn’t reassure me.

  Dylan stormed out of the house again and ran over to the old waterwheel. ‘And we won’t be needing this any more!’

  ‘No, Dylan! Not that!’

  But it was too late. It wasn’t until the object was flying through the air and glinting that I realized it was the medallion. It disappeared with a plop into the millpond.

  ‘No….! Veronica shrieked and ran over to him, but he was making his escape. ‘That was valuable!’ I thought for a moment she was going to jump in after it. But she slumped against the wall and cried.

  I also felt sad for its loss, having been so instrumental in its recovery. At least I’d made a detailed sketch of it, which would help my ongoing research.

  I walked over to her, but I felt queasy. She had to steady me as I approached, clutching my head.

  ‘Let’s look at you. Ooh, that’s nasty!’ She brought out a handkerchief, licked it and began to work on a gash near the hairline of my forehead.

  I felt my legs buckle and I lost consciousness.

  When I awoke, I was in the back of an ambulance on the way to the local hospital. There followed a lengthy wait for an X-ray and various doctors spent the afternoon coming and going from my trolleyside until giving me the all clear. They kept me in overnight, however, to be on the safe side.

  This gave me some time to assess where I was on my quest to discover the real Dylan. Yet again, I’d placed myself in danger, this time as a direct result of his strange behaviour. It only intrigued me further. But I wasn’t certain I wanted to go on.

  Once I’d recovered sufficiently, I took the opportunity to call John. However, I only got the answering machine, so had to leave a message.

  Veronica came to collect me the next morning, bringing flowers and fruit from Dylan. She led me downstairs and into the car park. Then she walked me over to an Austin A35 van, its bodywork stripped in readiness for a respray. She helped me inside and soon we were heading back to the mill house.

  ‘How’re you feeling?’

  ‘OK. My head’s a little sore, but there’s no real harm done.’

  ‘Thank goodness.’

  She seemed genuine for the first time since I’d met her.

  ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  ‘Yes. Dylan was driving like a maniac. It was frightening. I tried to reason with him, but he didn’t respond. We crashed.’
>
  ‘I see. I thought you must’ve been driving.’

  ‘No. Didn’t he tell you?’

  ‘He’s told me nothing. He rarely does when he gets into this state. Backtrack for me. What was happening before this?’

  ‘We went to see Emily. To say goodbye. She looked very different.’

  ‘Yes, I know. She came to see me yesterday evening. It disturbed me as well, I can tell you. I cried all night. This explains everything.’

  I rubbed my head, the stitches in the wound itching. ‘That’s not all. I found this painting in the stables a few days ago. The one of your husband painted by Seraphina.’

  Veronica pulled the Austin over to the side of the road. ‘Christ! I thought that’d been lost years ago. I must ask Dylan for it.’

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t. When Janis found out he still had it, she burnt it.’

  ‘What!’ All her compassion ebbed out of her face. ‘Wait till I get my hands on her!’

  She manoeuvred the car back out onto the road. She said nothing more until we arrived at the mill. She helped me back inside the house. Workmen were busy reglazing the lounge window. She sat me down on the sofa and laid a blanket over me.

  ‘Some tea, I think,’ she said, seeing how disturbed I appeared when I studied my surroundings. There was a large pile of broken pottery and glass shards in one corner, carefully swept up ready for disposal. Books lay strewn across the floor. Pictures had been replaced on the wall, but most had lost their glass.

  By the time Veronica returned, I was on my hands and knees, piling up the books and other items.

  ‘You shouldn’t be doing that. You need to rest.’

  ‘No, I’d like to. You’ve helped me. Now let me do the same for you.’

  She smiled. ‘OK, if you’re sure. We can do it together. But make sure you stop if it gets too much.’

  ‘Thanks for your concern. Dylan really went wild, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. It’s rare for him to get into such a state….But when he does, it invariably takes on this destructive form.’ When she noticed my mounting concern, she qualified her statement by saying: ‘His violence is always taken out on objects, not people.’

  I tried to digest this as she poured out the tea. ‘Shame about the medallion.’

  ‘Yes.’ Veronica looked troubled, but said no more.

  I was becoming concerned about the conspiracy of silence between Veronica and Dylan. The goat-head emblem and the symbols on the medallion so closely matched those in the old chapel, and as Sir Frederick and Serapahina were buried there, they must have made the connexion quickly.

  We spent the next hour gathering up all the objects that hadn’t been damaged and re-shelving the books.

  ‘I’m so sorry he’s destroyed so much,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t apologize for him. Anyway, most of the stuff here is his.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t realize.’

  ‘I lost everything in a house fire in the early Seventies. Not long after Frederick died. The house and furniture was one thing, objects, pictures and photographs quite another. They had a sentimental value – irreplaceable.’

  ‘Is that why you were so keen to know the fate of the painting?’

  ‘Yes. I have little left of him now to rekindle the memories.’

  Her face had contorted with a sadness that showed, more than words could’ve expressed, how much she had loved her husband.

  ‘Of course, the painting you saw has much more significance for Dylan and me. Seraphina completed about twenty-five canvases in her short lifetime. Seven or eight were sold. Dylan has tried to find them and buy them back without much success. I think he recovered one, or maybe two, from this method. He definitely has her self-portrait; an early, but magnificent work, if I may say so. And a couple of others. He never lets anyone see them. All the rest were lost when my house burnt down.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘No one was really too sure. It was razed to the ground. It used to stand at the base of the hill below the Lodge. The family had it built in the Edwardian era, when the Lodge became too small, primitive and uneconomic to maintain.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It was a sad night, seeing that lovely mansion go up in flames. And so soon after my husband and Seraphina had died as well. The last straw. I decided to sell off the land, including the ruined Lodge.’

  ‘Yes. Emily said Dylan bought the Lodge back from the Forestry Commission.’

  ‘Right. The ruin was too complex to demolish, so they simply planted all round it. Some of the outbuildings were used to store vehicles and equipment. I think they were glad when Dylan offered to buy it back. A small group of architectural historians placed a petition to parliament and it gained a Grade II* listing as a result. In time, they would’ve had to commit capital funds to shore up the ruins.’

  ‘What about the mansion house?’

  ‘Oh, that’s entirely under afforestation now. They stripped all the demolition debris away. Even infilled the cellars and blew up the stabling block, the only parts to’ve survived the fire. If you look carefully from the top of the mountain, you can still see the mature deciduous trees from the gardens amidst all the new forest. Otherwise, all is forgotten.’

  Seeing my increased interest, she went over to a bureau and brought out an old folder. She untied the strings after she’d sat down beside me. ‘Don’t tell Dylan – nor Janis for that matter – that I have these. They’re all I have now to remind me. All I could rescue before the flames almost claimed me as well.’

  She opened the folder and presented a number of black-and-white photographs, most singed from the fire. The first was obviously pre-war. It showed the great facade of the Edwardian house. I couldn’t believe such an imposing building really could have been lost so completely. On the lawn in front stood the unmistakable figure of Sir Frederick, still with a moustache, but much younger looking. Perhaps mid-forties. Another man, much older, with a bald head and a countenance that disturbed me, stood next to him.

  ‘That’s Sir Frederick, right?’ She nodded. ‘Who’s the other guy?’

  ‘One of the greatest influences on his life. He was his great spiritual guide. And mountaineering companion.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s where Janis’s interest stems from.’

  She frowned. ‘Sort of, though she’d never admit it. Really she found her own way to the hills. Her father spent more time with Dylan and Seraphina in that department. They were both good climbers.’

  ‘Is that where Dylan got the inspiration for his first novel?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it was. But Janis took things a step further than the others. She did a lot of alpine ascents, then headed for the Himalayas. Her ex-boyfriend’s death slowed that down, thank goodness, or she might not be here today. It became an obsession. A dangerous obsession.’

  ‘I take it you never liked it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you didn’t like your husband doing it, either?’

  ‘Oh, he’d long-since retired from serious mountaineering when I knew him. He was a lot older than me.’

  She pointed to the photograph again. In front of the two men were three little girls, all dark-haired, wearing white summer dresses. ‘This picture was taken around 1936. I must have been about four then.’ She was tapping her finger against the middle of the three children.

  ‘And the other two?’

  ‘On the left is Agnes Fortescue. On the right is Anne Jones, Dylan’s mother.’

  I gasped. ‘I didn’t realize you two went back so far.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Lifelong friends.’

  She drew the photograph to the back of the bunch and focused my attention on the next one. It showed a group of twelve young women, grouped together. In the background was the mansion again, with several marquees pitched on the lawns and various people milling around.

  ‘These were all our friends. There’s me, look….and Anne….and Agnes.’ She pointed to each of them in turn.

  ‘When wa
s this taken?’

  ‘The thirtieth of April, 1950.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘That’s easy. It was my wedding day. They were all my bridesmaids and attendants.’

  ‘Oh, I see. So that would’ve made you and Dylan’s mother about….’

  ‘Eighteen.’ She looked at me quizzically.

  ‘Rather a large age gap between the two of you, then.’

  ‘Yes, Frederick was sixty-two….I detect your disapproval.’

  ‘Well, each to their own. Wouldn’t see me doing it, even for money.’

  ‘I came from the landed class myself. My family had plenty of money. They cut me off when I married him, of course. No, I did it for love.’

  She did not care to explain further, but skipped over the remaining pictures. Two of the others were of interest. One showed the Favershams together in a walled garden. It was interesting to see them as a family group. Seraphina was radiant, looking about twelve, her long, dark hair falling over her shoulders and an arm around her father’s waist.

  It was difficult to distinguish between the two sisters, so similar was their appearance, except for the greater height Janis’s two extra years gave her. The elder had a brooding expression, her eyes cast off into the distance as if not wanting her picture taken.

  Another child stood on the other side next to a slimmer, but still plain-looking Veronica. It had to be Eric. Only the clothing made me surmise it was a boy, since his head had been burnt out of the picture. The strangest thing was how the hole had burnt in precisely this spot, when the rest of the picture, except for one edge, remained unscathed. It was as if it had been deliberately excised with a match-flame at a later date than the fire damage, but I couldn’t be sure. The thought made me shiver.

  I think Veronica detected my unease as she flicked the picture away, so I could view the second one of interest. It showed the two sisters again, about three and five, playing in the water at the seaside. A little boy of about two was playing with them.

  ‘Eric?’

  ‘No, Eric had blonde hair. That’s Dylan.’

  ‘Really?’