I was now somewhat settled into my family home at West Harbour having been wined and dined by Arthur Reid, the family lawyer and executor of my father’s estate.
That dinner spent with Arthur raised more questions than answers in my mind. There were subtle non verbal indicators that Arthur strove to camouflage but I perceived those nonetheless, being handicapped only in my memory, not in terms of my mental acuity and powers of perception.
I always seemed to posses an ability to intuit others’ motives, a facility someone once told me was close to psychic, but I can’t recall who that person was.
You have an innate ability to read people, Marcus, I was told by someone close to me, I think—it’s frustrating because I can almost recall the situation but just can’t picture a face.
Anyway, It’s not that I suspect Arthur of harbouring sinister motives, it’s just a feeling or impression that whispers inside me, a case of there being more in the garden than the gardener knows—and where that saying originated, I also haven’t a clue.
But to return to the matter, revenons a nos moutons comes to mind although again, I don’t know from where, I am beginning to settle into Sunnyside–that’s the name engraved on the cornerstone of the family house.
It’s a fine old house really, solidly constructed sometime in the mid-nineteenth century, “pre-Cofederation” Arthur tells me, which if my memory of Canadian history serves me correctly was 1867. Thus, the house was built in the 1850’s. A grand old dowager, to be sure.
And the most satisfying aspect of the house from my perspective is that the rooms are laid out in a centre hall plan so everything seems intuitive. Yes, there’s that word again–intuitive, which keeps recurring because I sense I’ve been here before but can’t say where or when and unfortunately, that at the moment is the story of my life.
Thinking such deep thoughts seems to have tired me out so I lock the doors, turn off the lights and wend my way upstairs to the back bedroom overlooking the harbour.
The house is big–too large for just me, I suppose.
I had the choice of five bedrooms but settled on the room with a view and a small balcony, not much larger than a Romeo and Juliet balcony but it also probably doubled as a widow’s walk.
The thought of loss depresses me so I push it from my mind and fall into bed intending to stare at the stars a while through the uncurtained window, but within moments am fast asleep.
I dream the same dream I always do. It’s a recurring dream with its own particular landscape Always the same people and same mysterious girl. I refer to her as “the girl I can never meet*. But she’s there, nonetheless and the icy tinkle of her laughter sends shivers up my spine—a frisson born not of fear, but longing.
She’s the magnet and I’m the iron and each night in the shadow land of dreams I willingly fall under her spell.
And tonight she’s casting her spell with me alone in the house.