Weaveworld

3

Twenty-four years was a third of a good span; time enough to form some opinions on how the world worked. Up until mere hours ago, Suzanna would have claimed she’d done just that.

Certainly there were sizeable gaps in her comprehension: mysteries, both inside her head and out, that remained un-illuminated. But that had only made her the more determined not to succumb to any sentiment or self-delusion that would give those mysteries power over her – a zeal that touched both her private and professional lives. In her love-affairs she had always tempered passion with practicality, avoiding the emotional extravagance she’d seen so often become cruelty and bitterness. In her friendships she’d pursued a similar balance: neither too cloying nor too detached. And no less in her craft. The very appeal of making bowls and pots was its pragmatism; the vagaries of art disciplined by the need to create a functional object.

The question she would ask, viewing the most exquisite jug on earth, would be: does it pour? And it was in a sense a quality she sought in every facet of her life.

But here was a problem which defied such simple distinctions; that threw her off-balance; left her sick and bewildered.

First the memories. Then Mimi, more dead than alive but passing dreams through the air.

And now this meeting, with a woman whose glance had death in it, and yet had left her feeling more alive than perhaps she’d ever felt.

It was that last paradox that made her leave the house without finishing her search, slamming the door on whatever dramas it had waiting for her. Instinctively, she made for the river. There, sitting awhile in the sun, she might make some sense of the problem.

There were no ships on the Mersey, but the air was so clear she could see cloud shadows moving over the hills of Clwyd. There was no such clarity within her, however. Only a chaos of feelings, all unsettlingly familiar, as though they’d been inside her for years, biding their time behind the screen of pragmatism she’d established to keep them from sight. Like echoes, waiting on a mountain-face for the shout they were born to answer.

She’d heard that shout today. Or rather, met it, face to face, on the very spot in the narrow hallway where as a six-year-old she’d stood and trembled in fear of the dark. The two confrontations were inextricably linked, though she didn’t know how. All she knew was that she was suddenly alive to a space inside herself where the haste and habit of her adult life had no dominion.

She sensed the passions that drifted in that space only vaguely, as her fingertips might sense fog. But she would come to know them better with time, those passions, and the acts that they’d engender: she was certain of that as she’d been certain of nothing in days. She’d know them – and, God help her – she’d love them as her own.