Excerpt – ARABESQUE by M G da Mota
Prologue
Southeast England, Late November 1998
She looks out of the window. Dark night. Black but clear. Twinkling dots punctuate the raven velvet of the sky. Stars shimmer cold and icy. Their light slightly wavering. She knows it is the Earth’s atmosphere. But that’s neither here nor there. It doesn’t matter a jot. Not at this moment anyway.
Darkness is the important thing. No moon. New moon. Why do people refer to a new moon when there is no moon or when one cannot see the moon from our revolving, ever turning blue dot? The moon is still up there in the sky. It’s just that at some point during its orbit its farther side from us is facing the sun. So the side facing us is dark and we can’t see it. As simple as that.
Tonight is new moon. An ideal night. She opens the window quietly and glances at the houses to her right first, then to her left. Like hers they are all immersed in silent darkness. People sleep. She looks at the luminous hands of her alarm clock on the side table. The shorter hand points at the number three, or close to it, and the long hand at somewhere between ten and fifteen. Probably around 3:12 in the morning.
Her house stands almost but not quite alone on top of the hill. To her right, looking from her bedroom window that faces the back garden, there are two houses. The one closest to hers is empty. No one lives there but it is up for sale. The old man who owned it died seven weeks ago. His son and daughter came down from London, cleared up and cleaned. Three days later the sign FOR SALE appeared in the front garden. It has been there for the last eighteen days but so far no one appears to want it. The owners of the next house are a couple with two young children. They are always exhausted, so nothing and no one will wake them once they hit the hay.
To her left, separate from hers by a small stretch of land with a handful of allotments, six detached and four terraced houses form a row on the poorly lit street. The last few already on the slope. The street has thirteen houses on her side, the highest side. People say it’s unlucky. They mean the number 13 is unlucky. A bad omen. She laughs silently. What a whole lot of bull! Besides, there are another eight houses on the lower side facing hers, making twenty-one in total, so the silly superstition makes even less sense.
With an empty place on one side and the allotments on the other, her house is fairly isolated. Should someone peer out of their first floor windows they will not glimpse a thing in her back garden. Not without the moon. The night is nearly pitch black and too cold; the temperature plummeted once the rain stopped. Nothing and no one moves. No light. The world appears deserted, enveloped in darkness and silence. Perfect.
She glances at the alarm clock again. Twenty five past three. Must get going. Without switching on the lights, with only her small torch, she walks slowly down the stairs and directly into the lounge, quietly sliding open the French doors. The tiny copper beech tree she bought lays ready. It is little more than fifty centimetres high, appears fragile and thin. But it will be fine. She knows it will. The difficult bit is what she has to do now. Before starting she hovers a moment by the doors, standing without moving a muscle for nearly half a minute. Listening. Listening. A distant owl hoots. A quiet bat brushes the top of her head. And then silence. She turns off her torch and waits for her eyes to adjust to the lack of light. A faint glow from the streetlights at the front of the house gives the shapes in the garden the appearance of spectres. It takes her a couple of minutes to see enough to complete the task.
She shivers. The air feels wintry. The forecast mentioned frost just before dawn. No problem. The soil is still soft though no longer muddy from the rain of two days earlier. She looks up and around carefully. All the first floor windows she can see are black. Curtains and blinds from where people may spy her garden are shut. Nothing. The fence framing her garden is taller than most, above two metres, casting long shadows when there’s moonlight. But tonight it just adds to the blackness. A fence built for privacy. She likes it.
A sudden pair of luminous dots appear at the far end of the garden. She freezes. Alarmed. It takes her a moment to realise it’s a cat. The glowing eyes of a cat. Her cat, Diabo. She named him with the Portuguese word for the devil after a brief holiday in the Azores years ago where she learned the word. Diabo is black, like a mini panther, with bright green eyes. He trots quietly towards her, meows, rubs her legs for a moment, then shoots up the stairs, probably to find a comfortable, warm spot on her bed. Fine. Taking a deep breath and carefully glancing around one more time she begins her task silently. It’s more difficult than anticipated but she manages. It takes her over an hour but she accomplishes her objective.
When the task is complete, she admires the tiny copper beech. It stands erect and proud, reaching for the sky, as if it wishes to touch the stars. It will grow into a fine tree. She straightens, wiping perspiration from her forehead with the back of her hand. No longer cold. The effort has made her hot.
She stands staring at the little tree for a moment longer. So small. So fragile. But it will soon grow. She’s read copper beaches can grow up to forty metres in height. That would be enormous but she hopes hers will stay smaller. She will get someone to prune it. Any more than ten to fifteen metres high and the neighbours may complain it is too tall and dangerous. She loves copper beeches, always has. On clear days the sun makes their leaves shine a deep, metallic red. Beautiful. She has wanted one for a long time. Now is the right moment. She smiles, then taking a deep breath goes in, shuts the French doors and walks to the kitchen.
She undresses in the dark. Her clothes are stained from the dirt. She throws them in the washing machine and sets it going at a high temperature. Without flicking on the lights she walks upstairs to her bedroom. Diabo is soundly asleep on her bed. She touches the cat gently, then goes to the bathroom and showers quickly. Slipping into her pyjamas and crawling under the bedcovers she wonders whether sleep will come. She needn’t worry. Her eyelids drop heavily, firmly shutting her eyes to the world and the annoying voices in her head. Within seconds she falls into a peaceful sleep. The sleep of the innocents as her mother would once have said.
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