Alice Hartley‘s Happiness. Philippa Gregory
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old ladies who look like they will live forever, you know.’
He warmed the pot and made the tea. There was fresh milk in the fridge. Alice frowned as he put the bottle on the table. Michael looked for a milk jug and poured it in, but that seemed to make it no better.
‘Milk is a poison, you know, Michael,’ she said.
‘Oh.’ Michael had not known this. He had drunk milk seldom after leaving primary school where he had to finish up one of those little bottles every break-time before he was allowed out to play. He had not liked the stuff much then, and he had a squeamish loathing for the skin on custard or hot chocolate; but he would not have called it poison exactly. However, he was unlikely to oppose Alice on this matter, or any other. He drank his tea black and sugarless. He did not think it was worth trying for the sugar bowl.
‘What will you do?’ Alice asked. She finished her tea and was peering into the depths of her cup. ‘What do you plan to do with this house?’
Michael gazed longingly at her. Blinkie, unseen in Michael’s baggy trousers, reared up and gazed longingly at her too.
‘I don’t know,’ Michael said weakly. ‘It depends, I suppose.’
Alice’s eyes when she looked up from her cup were so misty that he was afraid she had scalded them with the steam. ‘Depends on what?’ she asked, her voice silky.
Michael opened his mouth. All that came out was a pathetic squeak, wordless.
Alice rose to her feet; she was humming as she had done in Aunty Sarah’s bedroom but this time the noise was more insistent, like the distant purr of a lawn-mower in an enthusiast’s garden. Slowly but surely she unwound one of the scarves at her throat and held it across her face. Above the gauzy top her dark eyes stared hypnotically at Michael.
Her feet traced strange patterns on the flagstones of the kitchen floor. Michael crossed his legs in an effort to keep Blinkie aligned with at least some part of his body. She danced around in a little circle then she stood still and shivered her body in a sinuous snake-like tremble which set all the little beads and bells and discs on her scarves trembling and ringing.
This was unfortunate. The cat, mistaking the noise for the welcome clatter of the tin-opener, came running into the kitchen and seeing there was nothing in his bowl let out a contemptuous bawl of disapproval. Alice ignored him completely and took one small step towards Michael.
Michael pushed his chair back. He knew he was grinning in a village-idiotish sort of way but he could not manage his facial muscles at the same time as keeping everything else still.
Alice shimmered with more energy, her rounded breasts vibrating freely behind the kaftan. Michael, who had a vivid recollection from last night of lying beneath Alice and heading first one perfect globe and then another like a wet-dreaming soccer star, gave his familiar wail of despair, collapsed head first on the kitchen table and gave up his essence once more – before Alice had dropped more than one scarf.
Alice rested her face against his heaving shoulders and inhaled deeply. Though the essences slapped lightly into the tension areas of neck and around the eyes is best of all, the aura of yin is deeply restorative too. And, on a lower but none the less significant plane, it was a long time since anyone had shown much interest before veil number twelve.
As they embraced thus, in silent communion, the tom cat came a little closer and sniffed at Alice’s bare feet. She looked down at him with her dark eyes.
The cat looked back.
Alice knew herself to be in touch with Nature and the Life Force in all its manifestations; she sensed the cat responding to that Force in her.
The cat’s green eyes gazed inscrutably into Alice’s black ones. Anyone watching them would almost have believed that they were speaking to each other. Alice felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle as she sensed the cat willing her to understand something. Her fingertips prickled as their auras brushed, overlapped, mingled.
The cat dropped its eyes first, turned from Alice, and then hesitated. Alice waited, unmoving, for whatever gesture the cat might make. Slowly and solemnly, the cat backed up and with its usual accuracy pissed all over the hem of Alice’s kaftan, her bare right leg, and her right sandal with the little bells on the straps.
Alice gasped for a moment with shock and irritation but then exhaled deeply to bring herself under control. She released Michael and stepped away from him, saying nothing, though her right foot was warm and wet. Michael, still slightly shaky, sat up and poured himself another cup of sour tea.
‘That cat is blocking my Life Force,’ Alice said. Her voice was mellow and strong. ‘He has a negative presence. Can you feel it?’
Michael shook his head, the round lenses of his glasses fixed trustingly on Alice’s face.
‘His aura is dark,’ Alice said certainly. ‘His magnetic field is distorted.’
Michael looked at the cat, which was now sitting in a patch of sunlight washing his private parts with his back leg casually hitched over his shoulder and the air of a good job well done.
‘He may have fleas,’ Michael offered. ‘Aunty Sarah said he had when I was last here.’
Alice nodded. ‘She would have sensed that he was flawed,’ she said. ‘His Life Force is very weak.’
Alice went to the back door of the kitchen and opened it. Sunlight flooded on to the kitchen floor, illuminating Alice’s one wet footprint dot-and-carrying across the flagstones. Michael looked at it without curiosity.
‘Cat!’ Alice called peremptorily. The cat looked up at her and went trustingly towards her. Alice stepped out of Michael’s line of sight into the garden, the cat close behind her. There was a yowl of anger and dismay which was suddenly cut abruptly short. Alice came back into the kitchen with her wide-hipped swaying pace. She was trailing the limp cat by the tail, as lesser women trail mink coats. There was a dustbin by the door; she slung the cat into it and clanged the lid, then came back to sit down at the table.
‘I knew his Life Force was weak,’ she said conversationally to Michael.
Michael, dumbstruck, nodded; gulped his tea. His teeth clattered a little on the rim of his cup. They sat in the silence of satisfied lovers for a little while.
‘So what will you do with this house?’ Alice asked again.
Michael took a deep breath. ‘I wonder if I could live here while I finish my degree,’ he said. ‘I’ve never liked living in Hall. I could live here and rent some of the rooms.’
Alice looked down into the bottom of her cup.
‘May I tell you what I see?’ she asked.
Michael nodded.
‘I can see a place of growth here, of regeneration, of rebirth.’ She took his cup from his nerveless hands and clasped them in her own. ‘We could live here, you and I,’ she said, her voice husky with power. ‘We could run it as a growth centre, for people to try alternative medicine, alternative lifestyles.’ Her tongue flicked swiftly across her lips. ‘Therapies,’ she said. ‘Water therapy, mud therapy…sexual therapy, Michael.’
She glanced at him. ‘It’s a perfect place,’ she said. ‘Privacy, large rooms, an air of convincing elegance. We could do it. We could do it together, Michael.’
Michael gasped. He had been caught up by the soothing repetition of her voice into thinking she was telling his fortune. But it was more than that! It was an offer, a partnership. Him and Mrs Hartley! Together forever!
Gosh!
‘I don’t know anything about alternative lifestyles,’ he said. He sounded feeble, even to himself. Especially to himself.
Alice shrugged. ‘You could go on courses,’ she said. ‘You could go on retreats. I would teach you everything I know. You are sensitive, Michael. You know Yourself. The moment I saw your aura I knew you were one of