Chapter 10 – Finding Mabel [The day job]

It had been a long and, at times, overwhelming day. By mid-afternoon, Joyce had begun to wonder quite what she had taken on.

Raymond had started with the familiar. The police station was small, staffed by a young constable and a Royal Navy liaison rating. That much she understood. From there, however, the scale of Easterwich’s peculiar arrangements gradually revealed itself.

They toured the perimeter, Raymond pointing out sentry posts and the ring of metal fencing that separated the town from the outside world. Then came the naval garrison, followed by lunch with its Captain, a pleasant man who welcomed Joyce as though her arrival had been expected for months rather than days.

The afternoon took them out onto the water. A harbour launch carried mail and supplies to the minesweeper anchored offshore, where Joyce endured another introduction, another handshake and another tour. She learnt that the ship was one of several assigned to Easterwich in rotation, maintaining a permanent naval presence beyond the harbour.

By the time the launch turned back towards shore, Joyce had stopped trying to remember every name and detail. There would be time enough for that.

What she understood was the important part.

Easterwich might appear to be a quiet coastal town, but somebody had gone to extraordinary lengths to keep it that way.

──✿──

Thankfully, Joyce was home by four, giving her time to rest before meeting Mabel later that day. There was just enough time for tea, biscuits and a short nap in the armchair.

Not wanting to wake tired and hurried, she set the alarm on her pocket watch for half an hour.

As she closed the lid, she thought of Terry. The watch was the only thing of his she had left.

This time, there were no tears.

She smiled at the memory of him, settled back into the chair and drifted off to sleep.

──✿──

Joyce had hung up her uniform for the day and changed into her civvies. She was never one for flashy clothes, but she liked the changing fashions of the day. Wool slacks, low-heeled leather pumps and a simple high-necked top suited her perfectly.

Comfort and quiet elegance, she thought. That’ll do me.

Joyce had left the house and was now making her way towards the greengrocer’s shop.

The streets were busier now, with people returning home from work. What should have been a short walk took longer than expected, as people stopped to welcome her to the village, and Joyce in turn learnt a little about them.

Strangely, the appointment waiting at the end of the journey no longer seemed to press upon her. In London, people rarely made eye contact, let alone stopped to smile and say hello. Not these days.

Yet here she was, exchanging names and pleasantries with people she had never met, in a place that somehow felt increasingly familiar.

And somewhere along the way, the urge to hurry had gone.

She turned up to the shop a quarter of an hour late, and feared she would have upset Mabel. The shop assistant was just leaving and of course stopped to say hello. Joyce went with the flow, smiled and listened with real care. Near to the end of the brief conflab, she saw Mabel watching from inside the shop, a broad grin of her face.

“They all are very happy to see you again.” Mabel said as Joyce entered the shop.

“But it made me late, for you.” She remarked.

“We’ve waited much longer for your return, a few minutes more does not matter. Come inside.” She said nodding to the kitchen, “we have a lot to talk about.”

Tea, inevitably, had been offered and drunk, and for a while the two women talked about Joyce’s first day on duty. Eventually the conversation exhausted itself and a comfortable silence settled between them.

Joyce broke it.

“You said the other day that this community may never see the like of you again.”

Mabel looked across at her.

“What exactly are you?”

Mabel took a moment to choose her words.

“I was born of two very different beings. My father was a man upon whom extraordinary powers had been forced. My mother was a spirit guide who wanted nothing more than to become human. Somehow, between them, they made me.”

She paused.

“The Constants return, Joyce. I won’t. This is the only life I shall have. What I possess was born with me, and I’ve spent most of that life learning how to use it wisely and for the common good.”

Joyce had dealt with madmen, drug users and the deluded in almost every conceivable form. What bothered her was that none of the usual alarm bells were ringing.

Mabel was either an extraordinarily convincing fraud or exactly what she claimed to be.

For the moment, Joyce put the fantastic nature of the claim aside and dug deeper.

“If you possess all these powers, why do you need me to write your memoir? Why not just magic it into existence?”

Mabel smiled.

“You know the value of a witness all too well, Joyce. Someone who sees what happened and gives an account of it without changing the facts to suit themselves.”

“But I’m still taking your word for it. Whether you tell me something across this table or write it in a diary, it’s still your account. Forgive me, but your version of events may be coloured by your own values.”

“True,” Mabel admitted.

Joyce hadn’t expected the concession.

Mabel reached for her tea.

“But someone like you can be taught to read between those lines.”

She took a sip.

“And see the truth for herself.”

──✿──

Mabel carried the tea things to the sink, then disappeared to find a suitable diary. When she returned, she was carrying a slim book and an old carved wooden bowl.

She placed both on the kitchen table, took two candles from a drawer and set them in their holders. Once they were lit, she switched off the ceiling light.

“Sit,” she said, indicating the chair opposite.

Joyce obeyed.

The bowl contained scented water, with flower petals floating upon its dark surface. Mabel slid the diary across the table.

“Choose a page. Whichever one calls to you.”

Joyce flicked through it and immediately frowned. Dates, times, weather, locations, brief observations. Little more than field notes.

She looked up.

“How am I supposed to write your memoir from this?”

“Read between the lines.”

“There are no lines to read between. There’s barely any evidence.”

“Then stop looking for evidence with your eyes.”

Mabel’s voice remained gentle.

“Find a page that feels right. Open the diary there and place your hand upon it. Then look into the bowl.”

By now the scent rising from the water had filled Joyce’s senses. She chose a page without knowing why, laid the diary open and rested her palm upon it.

Then she looked into the water.

The surface stirred.

Slowly the petals drifted towards the rim, exposing an inky darkness beneath.

Something pulled at her.

The kitchen disappeared.

A horse and cart stood outside Shirley’s Greengrocers. A policeman held the reins, with a much younger Mabel sitting beside him. Their clothes belonged to another age. Victorian, Joyce thought at first. No, later than that. Edwardian.

Neither was smiling.

Mabel climbed down. The policeman watched her for a moment before flicking the reins and driving away.

Joyce followed.

Not in body. She had no body here. She was simply present, carried in Mabel’s wake through the shop, up the stairs and into a bedroom.

The door closed.

Mabel threw herself onto the bed.

Then came the tears.

Not the dignified tears of someone accepting a difficult decision, but great, uncontrolled sobs that shook her entire body.

“Why me?” she cried into the pillow. “Why can’t I be with him?”

And suddenly Joyce felt it.

Not merely Mabel’s grief, but everything beneath it. Love. Duty. Anger. Resentment. The terrible certainty that she had made the right decision, and the equally terrible wish that she hadn’t.

The force of it broke Joyce’s concentration.

The bedroom vanished.

She was back at the kitchen table, her hand still pressed against the diary. Tears were running freely down her cheeks.

Across from her sat the woman from the vision, separated from that broken-hearted girl by more than half a century.

Joyce stared at her.

“None of that is written here.”

“No,” Mabel said quietly.

Joyce looked down at the sparse entry beneath her hand, then back at Mabel.

“You gave him up.”

Mabel’s eyes glistened, but she held Joyce’s gaze.

“I had to.”

Joyce reached across the table and took her hand.

“Now I understand what you meant by sacrifice.”