“First time?” He picked her up at once. “So you’ve been again? Did he use hypnosis on you?” He moved one of her knights for her with a malicious grin.
“Three times now.” Gently she took it back from him and replaced it. She moved a bishop instead.
“And?”
She laughed uneasily. “It appears I have an alter ego. I still don’t believe I am her reincarnation-I can’t bring myself to accept that-but this woman is living a life somewhere there inside my head and it is so real! More real in some ways than the life I’m leading here and now.”
“Check.” Pete drained his glass. “You always were useless at chess, Jo. Why didn’t you let me help you? We could have made the game last at least ten minutes. Tell me about her, this lady who lives in your head.”
Jo glanced at him. “You’re not laughing?”
“No. I told you. I find it fascinating. I have always hankered after the idea of having a past life. It’s romantic, and comforting. It means if you fuck this one up, you can have another go. It also means that there might be a reason why I’m so unreasonably terrified of water.”
Jo smiled. “I expect your mother dropped you in the bath.”
“She swears not.” Pete raised his hand to the young man hovering in the background and ordered fresh drinks. “So shoot. Tell me about your other self.”
It was a relief to talk about it again. Relaxed and reassured by Pete’s quiet interest, Jo talked on. They finished their drinks and moved to their table in the grotto dark of the restaurant and she went on with the story. She kept back only one thing. She could not bring herself to mention her baby, or what had happened after his birth. When at last she had finished Pete let out a long, low whistle. “My God! And you’re telling me that you intend to let it go at that? You’re not going back?”
Jo shook her head. “If I go back again, I’ll go a thousand times. I’ve got to make myself drop it, Pete.”
“Why? What’s wrong with knowing what happened? For God’s sake, Jo!” He grinned. “I wouldn’t stop. I’d go back again and again till I had the whole story, whatever it cost. To hell with where she comes from. Whether she’s a spirit from the past or a part of your own personality fragmenting for some reason, or you in a previous existence, she is a fascinating woman. Think of the people she might have known.”
Jo smiled wryly. “She knew King John.”
“Bad King John?” He rocked back on his seat. “What a story that would be, Jo. Think-if you could interview him, through her! You can’t leave it there. You can’t. You must see that. You have to go back and find out what happened next.”
Judy was in the shower when Sam called the next morning. Wrapped in a towel, she picked up the phone, shaking her wet hair out of her eyes, watching the drops lying on the studio floor. The water was still running down her legs making pools around her feet. She dropped the towel and stood in the rectangle of stark sunshine from the window.
“Yes, Dr. Franklyn, of course I remember you,” she said, grinning. “What can I possibly do for you?”
Sam heard the grin at the other end of the phone. “I want you to do something for Nick,” he said slowly. “He was feeling pretty low last week-I expect you know. And now he is in France and he could use some company. Supposing I gave you his address. How soon could you be at Heathrow?”
“You mean he wants me to go to him?” Judy’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Shall we say I am sure he would be pleased if you were to turn up unexpectedly. I owe Nick a favor. I’ll even pay for your ticket. My present to you both.”
Judy raised an eyebrow. “It’s very kind of you, Dr. Franklyn, and I’d love to go.” She was staring at her naked reflection in the full-length mirror on the wall in front of her. “I never need to be persuaded to go to Paris. Especially is there’s a free ticket! But if I weren’t such an innocent, I might just ask myself what the real reason behind this sudden philanthropy was.”
He laughed out loud. “Then I’m glad you’re an innocent, Miss Curzon. I wouldn’t want you any other way.”
Ceecliff met Jo at Sudbury on Saturday morning and bore her home in an elderly Land Rover. The old house was full of dappled sunlight, every door and window open onto the garden, and Jo looked around her with enormous pleasure and relief. Somewhere deep inside she had been afraid the tension of that weekend two weeks ago might return.
Triumphantly Ceecliff produced a bottle of Pimms. “Nick is in France, you say?” She poured out two glasses as they sat down beneath the willow.
Jo nodded.
“And did you make it up before he went?”
“We parted friends, I suppose,” Jo said cautiously. What was the point of telling Ceecliff that he had left her frightened and alone in her apartment and gone straight to Judy? That he hadn’t been there when she needed him and that she hadn’t seen him since? She felt her grandmother’s eyes on her face and forced a smile. “I’ve decided to go back to the hypnotist again. No more hysteria, no more involvement. Just to find out, objectively, what happened.”
Ceecliff pursed her lips. “That is madness, Jo. How can you possibly be objective? How could anyone?”
“Because Dr. Bennet can tell me to be. That is the beauty of hypnosis, one does what one is told. He can use my own mind to hold everything at arm’s length.”
Ceecliff raised an exasperated eyebrow. “I think you’re being naive, Jo. Extraordinarily naive.” She sighed. Then after heaving herself out of her chair, she turned toward the house. “But I know better than to argue with you. Wait there. I’m going to fetch Reggie’s papers for you.”
She returned with an attache case. Inside was a mass of papers and notebooks.
“I think you should have all those, Jo. The Clifford papers. Not much compared with some families’ archives, but better than nothing. Most of it is about the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. You can look at that another time. Here. This is what I wanted to show you.” She unfolded an old letter, the wax that had sealed it still attached to the back, the spidery scrawls of the address faded to brown.
Reverently Jo took it and screwed up her eyes to read the unfamiliar copperplate hand. It was dated 12 June 1812. Jo read aloud. “‘My dear Godfon and Nephew’-he’s using long
Ceecliff grimaced. “Don’t go getting any ideas above your station, my girl. Come on, put it all away. You can look at it later. Let’s eat now, before the food is spoiled.”
While her grandmother rested, Jo drove to Clare. She parked near the huge, beautiful church with its buttresses and battlemented parapets and stood gazing at it, watching the clouds streaming behind the tall double rank of arched windows. Had Richard de Clare stood looking at the same church? She could picture him now, the last time she had seen him, in the solar at Abergavenny, his hazel eyes full of pain and love and courage, the deep-green mantle wrapped around him against the cold, clasped on the shoulder by a large round enameled brooch.
She shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans and stared at it morosely, then, hitching her bag higher on her shoulder, she let herself in through the gate and began to walk toward the south porch.
Richard de Clare had never stood in this church. One look around the fluted pillars and high windows told her it
