All the Stars in Her Hand

Chapter Sixteen

We lay side by side on the camp bed in the dark, with the candles lit from the kitchen shelf. I rested my head on his shoulder, close as comfortably possible to his heartbeat, hand joined with his. We watched the shadows play on the wall, defined by the candle”s flicker — forming shapes, like clouds on a summer”s day, when a moth weaved between them, tantalized by the light. Sidney spotted an eagle; I pointed out a falling snowflake, until it defied me by flying upward.

I tucked myself closer to him. ”I missed you,” I said. Quietly.

”I was sorry I left,” he said, softly. ”All of the time I was away.”

”That”s why I came, really. I didn”t want to go back to Cornwall on my own. I knew how empty the cottage would be — I couldn”t concentrate on interviews or notes, no matter when they were due.” I drew a design against the fabric of his shirt with one finger, a trail of lines. ”It didn”t feel important to me, not compared to knowing if you were all right.”

”Once I was gone, it felt as if I had to keep going,” he said. He exhaled, deeply. ”I kept running ... I had no idea where. When I ended up here, at the end of it all, I regretted it. I knew it had been a mistake. No matter how remote I traveled, I couldn”t get away from those things.”

He turned his head, so he could see into my eyes, in the faint light of the candles. ”Escaping you hadn”t been the outcome I was hoping for, I swear.”

”If you had stayed in Cornwall, do you think you would have found the words — still?” I asked. ”Or would ... would there have been a better way?” Walking away was better, perhaps. It would have been less satisfying than what we had on this night, but not everything in life was satisfying. Less risky, a little more emotionally sticky, it would still have carried us through to a new chapter in life.

He shrugged, then shook his head. ”Maybe I would have learned to live with that promise being undelivered,” he said. ”Lived with being disappointed in myself.”

”I wouldn”t have been disappointed in you.” Learning to live with the failed story would have been the easy part, if he had been able to forgive himself for the mistakes of his past. ”But I can say — since you found your way — how proud I was that you tried to save it. After all that happened, you didn”t let it go.”

I found a comfortable nook for my head on his shoulder, letting my frame rest in the niche of his own. ”Dean would have been proud, too,” I said, softly.Terry would have been proud. I didn”t add this, although I wanted to. I knew that somewhere in the back of his thoughts tonight, his father would be there.

”I know.” His tone grew serious. ”I wish ...” he paused. ”I had wanted him to see it, though.” Although he could be speaking of either of them, I knew this statement was meant for Dean.

Not because Dean loved the books, really; it was because he wanted this chance for Sidney more than anything. The one last thing that could make him happy was to know that Sidney”s talent wasn”t lost forever.

”That part didn”t matter to him,” I said. ”He only wanted to see you believe in yourself again.”

”He trusted you not to let me give it up, probably,” said Sidney, laughing. ”I think he believed in you more than me. And he was right.”

I tried not to let this compliment go to my head, much less my heart; something that serious thoughts prevented from happening, as I watched the candlelight play on the bare wall.

”Would he be happy about us?” I asked, softly. ”Do you think ... he knew?”

”He did,” answered Sidney. ”I never told him I asked you, but he knew. He”d be glad about it now.”

He had my hand in his again, his fingers turning the gold band”s circle around one of mine ”So are you still committed to this?” he asked. ”To all my regenerations? Since the latest one managed not to disappoint you totally.”

”I am. All your versions, with all their personality quirks and individual facets of behavior,” I answered, with emphasis. ”Of course, that begs the question — would the Doctor ever have been happy traveling through time with the same companion?”

”I think he would have been,” Sidney answered. ”He simply never had the chance.”

He shifted his weight carefully, so we wouldn”t be drawn apart by his movement. I nestled closer to him, breathing in deeply of his scent. Feeling it leave me in a deep and quiet exhale.

”You never really told me,” I said. ”If those characters are people you knew and loved. And didn”t.” My glance flickered up to his face, which I couldn”t really see from this angle, only the shadows cast over his jawline, and the ones hiding his eyes.

”Who do you think they are?” he asked, turning the tables on me.

”I think ... Janet is your mother,” I said. ”I think Leonard is Dean.” I hesitated. ”Christopherwas Terry.” The stark emotions behind his death in the story made me certain of that one. ”Lillian could be Lois, or even Hester ... Nannette, Poppy ....or any of a dozen other girls you grew up with.”

I looked up, trying to see his eyes. ”Am I right about any of it?”

”Maybe.” His smile, inscrutable, but I thought it was on purpose. ”You”re not wrong — I thought of all of them when I wrote it. I thought of people I only met once ... people I would meet someday. Characters across the spectrum of humanity, as the book critics say.” I could see his grin, flashing up from the depths, only to vanish into the roots of a gentler smile.

”You could have been Lillian,” he said. ”You have that spirit in you — the same strength in a deceptively-small human form. Determination under that winning smile.” The grin came back again at the end of this. ”Maybe I knew I was going to meet someone like that, in my subconscious mind.”

”That doesn”t sound like me at all,” I answered.

”Don”t be so certain,” he answered, with a little of the original inscrutability.

I played with the loose button below his shirt”s collar, dangling by a thread from the soft grey cotton fabric. ”So who are you?” I asked, softly. ”I would guess Sullivan ... he”s the closest. But it”s still not as close as I would expect.”

”What did you expect?” he sounded amused.

”You,” I answered, with emphasis yet again. ”I expected more.”

”Than what you have in the story already?” he said. ”I think that”s a bit unfair.”

”You know what I”m talking about,” I said. I left the button dangling, tracing the outline of its hole. He laid his hand over mine, against his chest, close enough that the beat of his heart was faintly perceptible.

”I”m all of them,” he said. ”That”s why. There”s a little of me in all of them, just as there is a little of everybody else alive. I didn”t need to be one of them to tell the story, I needed to be all of them.”

”That makes it sound like it”s the magical power behind the book,” I said. Strange as it seems, it was not so strange to think of it like that. Maybe it was true, that it was his ability to understand, sometimes too well, that made the story what it was.

”That”s the secret of it,” he said, his voice almost a whisper, as if he knew my thoughts. ”That was the gift that helped it endure. It can be yours, too, Maisie, because you already have it.”

”Not like that,” I answered, softly. ”I can”t look at them all as equal, the way you do. Even in the story that had the most meaning to me of them all.”

”Your story kept alive things I had forgotten,” he said. ”You were part of everything in it, so don”t try to make it into less than it is.”

His arm drew me in to rest against his torso, his free hand on my shoulder. In the candlelight, I saw the glint of flame”s movement playing across the gold band on his finger, the words inside close against his skin. It was still true, that vow on my part. It would never not be, even if it changed over time, in ways subtle and significant both. The heart of it would never be changed, so long as my own was still beating within me.

________________________

In the morning, we packed our things. I fastened my suitcase closed, with Mr. Bubbles and the battered copy ofA Dark and Glorious Housestill lying on top of my clothes; Sidney slipped the finished manuscript into its old drawer in the typewriter case, and closed its hard shell cover over the machine.

We locked the door of the Irish castle behind us, then descended the little path and stone steps to the shore. Which of the views on this island had become one of Dean”s canvases I had not thought to ask. Maybe all of them. Maybe, like the Egypt dream, he had sketched and painted whilst Sidney was below, typing with fervor on the old Royal ”MM” on the boathouse”s bridge.

I inhaled, deeply. Here was the right place to say goodbye to the past. Going home, it would be time to say hello to the new future. Old things, old dreams, could not be the sole luggage of our new life together, so we would have to sort out which were being kept and which would be laid side.

Sidney hoisted the flag at the dock”s end. We sat waiting on the sturdiest boards, watching the sunrise strengthen, talking of unimportant things. When the first boat came into view, he waved to it, and it veered our direction. My first time to hitch a ride with a passing fisherman, I thought, as we gathered up our things and stepped on board. Behind me, the trees and the hilltop fortress slipped away as ripples of white foam trailed behind us on the water.

We took the bus, then the train to the ferry dock, to the boat that had brought me to Ireland a week ago, and which would take us home now, at least for the present. We bought hot cross buns at a stand near the water, and fed bits of them to the water birds, and to a chance pigeon or two that had lighted on the ferry”s deck during the crossing.

Hunger soothed, heart lighter, I stood with him at the rails as we watched the shadowy outline of England on the horizon. I tried not to feel the tremor of anxiety in my heart for what was coming next. Would we go home, then to Lewiston? Would we compromise? Nothing had been spoken of before, when we were making plans to be joined together for life — no plans when we lay in the dark last night, except that of leaving the castle.

”Are you glad to be free?” I asked him.

”Of what?” he asked. ”Byron?” He looked across the water. ”I am, in a way. For an agent, he”s successful, and he”s incredibly clever. But I hadn”t counted on it being used against me when I was a novice.”

”I meant of Alistair Davies.” I looked at him instead of the scenery. ”You”re free,” I repeated. ”Book four is finished — that can be the end of him, if you want it to be.”

His gaze softened. ”I don”t know,” he said. He stared down at his hands momentarily. ”It”s true, what you said. I don”t have to write another book under that name. Of course, I didn”t have to write another book ever again.” Now he put on an impish smile.

”You mean be one of the idle rich?” I quipped. ”That”s what you said you didn”t want to do.” I gave him a gentle poke in the arm. ”I know that you could have changed your mind.” So many things had changed since his decision to give up Lewiston and the money and be a writer again, I hardly expected that he was going to do it seriously.

My gaze turned downwards, to the grey-green waves of the sea below, into which I should consign my imagination”s version of the famous and secretive author forever. If all other ties were being cut, why waste any part of my memory musing on a fantasy so far past the realm of possibility that it was laughable? If I could find it in myself to say farewell to a friend of four years who had been flesh and blood, saying goodbye to a fantasy of a decade old should be far easier.

”What future do you see is the question I”m asking,” I said. ”For you and for me. Together, separately — we haven”t talked about it at all, but it”s here now.”

”You mean as a couple?” he asked. ”Or as everything?”

”Everything?” I said, tentatively. ”It doesn”t have to be what we first wanted. It can be different. You can”t exactly be a village handyman for life, I know.” Rueful as the admission came, I knew only too well that he couldn”t really fix doorknobs and roof tiles in Port Hewer, any more than I could be a full-time maid at the Penmarrow. Chalk this revelation up to my own recent perspective on naivete. Maybe Lewiston would be part of it after all, or even London was on the table again.

”I keep thinking about the writing class I taught,” he said. ”I think about it more often, the way it felt to be part of something like that. I”d like to do it again. Something like it, not the same, exactly. Something to help people who need an escape after trauma — soldiers back from war, kids coming from casualty wards, people who have had their lives changed suddenly. Painfully, who need a way to come to terms with life.”

”In London?” I asked.

”Not necessarily,” he said.

He angled his body towards mine. ”What do you want?” he asked me, softly. ”What future do you picture, Maisie?”

”For me?”

”For you. For me, for us.” He echoed my original question.

I let myself turn inwards, as if it was written in the clouds within and not in the physical world. It might as well be written in the stars, for all that I could say about concrete plans.

”I want to write,” I said. ”I”m happy with the way things are going with my books — I want to keep telling stories, even if they crash, of course.” I hid my smile. ”But I can do that anywhere in the world, I suppose, even if Cornwall is where I”d like to do it.”

My body shifted towards his in turn, so I could look into his face completely. ”The truth is, I want to be with you,” I said. ”That matters to me even more than Cornwall — as much as any brilliant plan for my future that Arnold could dream up. I want us to be together somewhere in the world — somewhere I can plug in my tablet computer to be recharged, at least.” As if prepared for anything, I swallowed my last bit of regret for torn roots — not for accepting the loss of one paradise, but choosing the one that would be filled with nights like the last one, days like this one. ”I want us both to be happy in life. That”s the future I want for myself, and for both of us, if I could choose.”

He breathed out, slowly, as he listened. I watched him, watching him gaze across the water, as if taking in the landscape the way he had taken in my face, my words, the moment before.

”I want to sell Lewiston, and settle the family trust,” he said. ”I want to use what”s left to buy a place where I could found a nonprofit writing program like the one in London.”

”You do?”

He nodded. ”I know Lewiston is bigger, but it isn”t the right place to do something like this. I want it to be small, meant for focusing on a few people at a time — to feel more like a home to whoever comes. Giving them a safe place to stay for a time, where they can learn to use what”s inside them to build life anew. I”ve taken training in first aid and home care, but I thought I could do training in emotional therapy, to figure how to bring those techniques into teaching writing and storytelling as a type of therapy.”

He leaned his elbows on the rail. ”Dean”s cottage is already equipped for people with disabilities,” he said. ”It isn”t big enough to supply all the room for patients or staff to be comfortable for retreats, including you and me ... so I thought about buying Sonia”s, too.”

I felt a jolt of surprise. ”You did?”

”Between the two, there would be enough room to live and work — for two people, definitely, and whatever plans they make. We could make the spaces our own, keep the parts we love and change the rest to suit. With space for the dogs, of course,” he added with a smile that twisted to one side. ”The mangy pack needs a stable home, too.”

”Of course they do,” I echoed, trying not to laugh.

I was still surprised by this plan, catching it up in my mind. It was obvious how intricately he had thought about it. In the back of his mind, he had been putting it together for some time, keeping it apart from himself and his life, unsure of both its merits and his surety of self until now. What had come gradually to completion for him was being delivered to me in a breathtaking stroke — not that I had failed to see pieces of it before, a snatch here and there in things he had said. That experience had never fully left him.

”I spoke with Callum about it, once,” he continued, carefully. ”I thought maybe he could help, maybe some of the other home care nurses he knows. It wouldn”t exactly fly off the ground at first, but after the money is paid for dissolving the estate and helping the staff transition ... and the money shelled out to buy the new properties ... there would be enough to start. At least, to install the right fixtures, provide salaries for the right sort of carers.”

A pause followed, the space of a heartbeat, and he glanced my way, his gaze searching mine. ”What do you think of it?”

My heart was beating harder. A serious question, being asked about a serious decision to make. ”I think it sounds right,” I answered. ”Like something you have been thinking about for a long time.”

It was what he had dreamed of doing once before, something with meaning and heart that would require his talent — a gift that would let him help people in the hands-on way he had chosen to live by in Cornwall.

”Would you say yes to me, if that”s what I wanted to do?” he asked. ”I would need your help to do part of it. But it wouldn”t be fair to ask you for it, if this isn”t something you want in your life.”

I took the silence after this for my own. I was picturing the future of carers helping children come to grips with chronic disease in a room with walls covered in story art; adults with missing limbs, severe limitations, or memories of harrowing trauma — learning to express overwhelming frustration or secret dreams in the sunny garden over which Dean pretended to despair in years past. The likes of Callum helping with bandages and biscuit baking, whilst Sidney helped them find a release in words that were stronger than trauma and regrets.

There would be tears and disasters — moments of profound revelation — small miracles that would leave us filled with wonder. How could I say no to that?

I took a deep breath. ”Since we can have the plans that either of us wants, why wouldn”t we try both?” I answered. I reached for his hand, my fingers taking it in my hold. ”You know I promised to help you if you wanted to do something new. I think even Dean couldn”t offer an objection to this one.”

He laughed. ”The money from Alistair Davies paying to set him free of his fame,” he said. He rubbed his neck, then lifted his gaze to the sky. ”It”s a touch ironic.”

”We could say it”s poetic,” I suggested. ”That sounds better.”

We finished the last hot cross bun between us on one of the benches, sitting in view of the shore that was only a mile away now, and growing closer by the second. I could see the outlines of buildings, one on a hill above the coast that reminded me of the Penmarrow, with a sailing boat drifting by just below that line of sight. If I squinted, I could pretend it was Cornwall”s coast I saw. It couldn”t be reality soon enough.

High street with the greengrocer”s baskets of harvest fruits, the big wreath of autumn apples and corn husks Mrs. Graves had made for the church”s door. We would be on our way home in a matter of hours, on a train to Cornwall. I would unpack my things in the cottage, call Arnold to announce I was home again and would keep the rest of our plans. Maybe we would talk about a brief visit to L.A. when my novel”s adaptation began filming, and I would show Sidney the beach and the Malibu hills of my past, like in my fantasy. One more last fling — only without heartache this time — before the new begins.

Anything was possible. Possibly even the one thing I hoped Sidney would change his mind about wasn”t a closed door, not in a world that seemed full of open windows on this day.

”So what happens to the infamous Alistair Davies?” I asked. ”You”ll be sending the book to Helen, and then I assume you”ll do something about the fame surrounding it. You”ll have to do something about the future that your agent has in mind, at least.” He would tell the press to buzz off, as well as the various entities offering him money for personal appearances or public endorsements. But what to do about the enigma behind it? That was truly the difficult part.

”I”ll break my contract, if I can,” said Sidney. ”I”m the wrong sort of client for Byron, who needs someone more interested in being at the top than I am. Maybe I”ll break with the publisher, too. But only if Helen understands.”

He leaned forward, tossing the last bit of his roll out to sea, where I knew either a fish or a gull would make short work of it.

”I don”t suppose you”ll write anything again for a long time,” I said. Softly.

It was a fact of life that the future might never again see his talent in its creative form. I held this last little hope as a souvenir and not an ultimatum. Anybody would be satisfied with what he had just created, at a breathtaking pace of work. Anybody should accept it and ask nothing more.

Book four in my hands, thick and wonderful and full of significance.Who would have thought it would ever be true after nine years of being lost in the literary world?

”Maybe if the right story comes,” he said. ”Then Alistair Davies might return.”

”Would you want him to?” I had to ask. I didn”t want to be hungry with curiosity forever.

He gave it thought, carefully, before his lips parted again. ”Is that your way of asking me if I want to be him ... or want to be what he is, as a writer?” he asked. Not in a way that suggested he was offended, only that he was curious to know.

”The last one,” I said. ”But ... maybe the first, too. Only because of how many people like the former version of me would regret missing an incredible book by their favorite author, only because a different name was on the cover. But mostly the last.”

His gaze grew faraway, as if he held my question in his mind. I wondered if he was searching for the answers within, or merely thinking of the right words to make the choice easier for me to accept.Maybe because he knew I might be disappointed.

”I think ... some part of me will always turn to it,” he said. ”It will be writing deep down inside — telling the story even if I don”t.” He drew a breath. ”Whether it can keep from coming out, who knows? It”s complicated, getting from the first stage to the second. But, as a storyteller, I expect you know the answer already.” He smiled at me now. ”Sometimes it”s essential to do it, after all.”

I was not yet daring to picture it — not quite. ”What sort of story would deserve it?” I asked, trying to be playful about it, and not at all serious.

He shrugged, as if agreeing that this shouldn”t be taken too seriously. ”Maybe the story of a young man who runs away from his life. The sort who wanders and has adventures both good and bad before someone shows him the reasons he should face it all.”

Another beat of my heart skipped — almost as if it was taking shape already, the first frames of a compelling novel.If only.But that would be leaping too far ahead, I knew.

”How about a girl who goes out into the world to chase her dream and discovers a bigger adventure awaits?” I suggested, trying to keep the playfulness alive. ”Secrets and missteps? Strange episodes of fortunes? Strangers who become friends?”

”That”s your story to tell,” he said, shaking his head. ”It”s far too good for you to give to anyone else. No one could possibly do it better justice.”

I left aside his compliment so I would not blush, although it was hard. ”Maybe I”ll write a children”s book,” I said, leaving the suggestion behind. ”About a shaggy little terrier”s adventures. I always felt like I wanted to write one.” I toyed with the pencil lying on my open notebook”s page. ”Then again, I might need a coauthor for a project that ambitious.”

He laughed. ”I would be honored to join Maisie Clark on that literary project,” he answered. ”But maybe with a name other than Alistair Davies on the cover, if there”s no objection.” He looked across the way. ”I”ll try being myself, just once, if only for a lark.”

”Who said it was my name on the cover, either?” I asked. ”I could decide to change it, you don”t know.”

”Maisie Davison would look very nice on a glossy cover,” he said. ”But I like your name as it stands, if you care to know.” He rose from the bench. ”Don”t change it on my account, unless that”s what you”d like.”

”We”ll see.” In the margins of my page, I scribbled a list of names, only not the one he had mentioned. ”Maybe I have something else in mind.”

”M. Daniels.” ”M.C. Daniels.” That felt more like it.

Standing at the rail again, Sidney braced himself with one hand, watching as we drew near to the ferry”s dock. He held the other one out to me as I joined him, tucking my notebook into my bag. My hand held his own tightly, feeling the smooth gold band I had placed there the week before.

It was unforgettable, all that had happened between us. Perhaps it would make a good novel, much like the part I had already fictionalized to keep alive the pieces I had almost lost. Like love letters and lost romance, the moment of finding what you want most reminds you how valuable each part is in the whole of life. To be happy, even as a successful dreamer, would not be the same without the hand in mine right now.

His lips formed a smile that blossomed my own in turn as I watched his face change with the ferry”s dock coming into view. ”Home,” he said. I could hear the satisfaction in his voice.

”Home,” I agreed.

”To the pack of dogs waiting,” he added, with a grin.

I buried my laugh for this as I turned back to the view that was not Cornwall, but might as well be in my mind”s eye, for all its shore represented to us. The beginning and the end, coming full circle to where we belonged.

This is the story of my dream and me, I thought. Me and my book, and of writing a story that would be inseparable from myself in the world. Only it was a different one than I realized in the beginning: far stranger, far more complicated and life-changing than I could ever have imagined as the little girl who kept sticker-covered journals; or the nearly-grown one who had loved a modern masterpiece into a tatty state.

I glanced at Sidney, who sensed my gaze, and turned to smile into my eyes. We said nothing, but the bond between our fingers tightened a little, closing the seams between so they became as one.