Chapter 4
Chapter Four
After her unexpectedly early night, Stella awoke not long after dawn. It was a bit early for breakfast so she squeezed some oranges to keep her going for the time being. While drinking her juice, she decided to see if the planets could shed some light on her so-called love life. A quick check on recent planetary transits might help her to navigate some of what was going on. This was something she tried to avoid wherever possible because there were so many cautionary tales of astrologers suffering from acute transititis, who could barely make a cup of tea without consulting an ephemeris first. So, although she didn’t like to use astrology to explain away painful episodes, today she would make an exception.
She pulled out her ephemeris for the twenty-first century. Unlike her ephemeris for the twentieth century, this one was in a reasonably good state of repair. It was a simple matter to find the page for this week and to track the planets’ exact movements for the past few days.
The emotional moon had just crossed into her seventh house, where it opposed her natal Mars, the planet that represented a man in a woman’s chart. She laughed in spite of herself. It was all there. A man signified by the red planet. A red man. In particular, one Benedict Redman, sitting right opposite the house of marriage.
By rights, there should be a challenge from Saturn, it being the planet of blockages and boundaries, and a difficult aspect to Saturn would represent the barrier of Benedict’s marriage. In actual fact, Venus was all loved up with Neptune the deceiver, who was renowned for bringing confusion to everything he touched with his foggy fingers, often making it impossible to separate fact from fiction.
Something didn’t add up, though. She’d always prided herself on being able to visualise complex planetary transits in her mind’s eye. Perhaps she was losing her touch and should work it all out on paper in case she’d missed a trick. Yet, she was sure she hadn’t.
No matter how tempted she was by Benedict Redman, he was clearly involved with this Miranda woman, plusthere was a child in the mix, and Stella was not that sort of girl. She could never hurt a family and would never get in the way of a marriage. It was hard to believe that Benedict, who seemed otherwise perfect, appeared to have such different values. And as for that poor little boy, what would become of him if his father carried on in this vein? Benedict Redman was truly despicable and she hated him. To think she’d almost worn her mother’s wedding wrap on a night out with him. She snorted and threw down the ephemeris.
An old, dog-eared piece of paper slid out and landed on the floor. Ashamed, she picked it up. It showed a large circle, with a smaller one inside it, creating a band that was divided into twelve and populated with the signs of the zodiac. The chart was also divided into twelve houses, ranging from the first house – the ascendant, or rising house – through to the twelfth house. Symbols for the planets were drawn at the appropriate degree in each sign and coloured lines linked the planets. These denoted the aspects: the angles made by the planets to one another.
Although it always caused some pain to look at this birth chart, it was her favourite, because her mother had cast it for her when she was born. Stella had seen all kinds of amazing charts in her time, ranging from heavily illustrated, hand-painted works of art through to crisp, modern charts churned out on computers. But this humble chart, drawn from scratch by her mother, was the most beautiful horoscope that she’d ever seen. Each glyph was neatly inked, and all the symbols for the angles between the planets were recorded faithfully in the table of aspects beneath the birth chart.
Her mother had lived long enough to pass on her knowledge about the beauty and the rhythm of the night sky, what each planet represented and what each sign signified. To make it easy for Stella to understand, her mother had explained that the planets were like actors in a play. The twelve zodiac signs they occupied were the costumes they wore. The houses from one to twelve that the planets resided in were the stage sets. And the aspects were the lines the actors spoke to each other.
Despite all these teachings, Stella had never seen her own birth chart. When she’d eventually started to go through the papers and books left to her by her parents, she found her chart, sealed inside a stiffened envelope. In turn, the envelope was tucked inside her mother’s twentieth-century ephemeris, which was now hers. With the benefit of what her mother had taught her combined with the power of the internet, Stella soon learned how to translate the birth chart, and eventually worked out in her head what her heart always knew, that the horoscope in the stiffened envelope was hers.
Stella wondered why her mother hadn’t interpreted the chart or left her some notes. All those years of teaching her daughter the basic tenets of astrology, and she’d never once shown her the chart she’d made. As Stella had grown older, and her understanding of astrology deepened, she realised that it was a fluid art, and believed that her mother had not wanted to project her own visions onto a life still forming. Her mother must have been tempted to look at the chart to see how her daughter’s life would unfold, but without peeking into areas that were private. Stella’s heart ached for her mother all the more for respecting her secrets and her as-yet unlived life. A mother’s desire to know had been sacrificed to a daughter’s right to develop at her own pace.
Carefully, she traced the chart with an index finger. She was born when the sun was in the water sign of Pisces, so that meant her ‘sign’ was Pisces in the popular parlance, and her moon was also in Pisces, right next to the sun. This conjunction of the two luminaries meant that she was doubly sensitive and compassionate, but not especially practical or realistic. The sun and moon also represented her mother and father, who had been together in life and together in death. Being placed in the fourth house, which represented home and roots, the restless moon mirrored the fact that Stella was never in one place long enough to consider it home.
The zodiac sign coming up over the horizon at the time she was born was Sagittarius, which gave her some fire, energy and optimism and made her appear more outgoing and adventurous than she actually was. Mars was conjunct her ascendant, but it was placed in the twelfth house, so this tempered her temper, meaning she struggled to be angry with the right person at the right time for the right reason, and as a consequence, often made her own life harder than it needed to be.
The symbols on the chart grew harder to see as her eyes blurred under a haze of tears. She never held back from crying for her lost parents. It was a wound that would never heal, and in many ways, she wanted to keep it fresh. People had always told her when she was a child that time healed all things, that in time the pain would leave her and she would forget. But it hadn’t left her because she didn’t want to forget. As painful as it was, she wanted to remember her parents and remain faithful to their memory.
There they were in her birth chart. The two luminaries. The lights of her life. Sun and moon. Father and mother. Bound together in her horoscope and bound together in eternity. That was Stella’s only comfort, that her parents had died together. In many ways, she wished she’d died too and stayed with her family, but it hadn’t been her destiny, so she’d made a determined effort to live her life and to be glad of it. But she still cried for her parents, trying to heal the wound that would never heal.
Too upset to contemplate her birth chart any longer, she decided to go for a swim in the ladies pond on Hampstead Heath. If nothing else, spending some time in her own element would take her out of herself for a while.
She grabbed her swimming kit and set off along Abbey Road, past the red-brick and white plaster mansion flats, and continued through groves of vast white villas that made her feel as though she was running through a maze of gigantic wedding cakes. Onwards to Swiss Cottage and past shops and cinemas, through side streets, into pretty mews and out again into grand Victorian terraces. Up Parliament Hill, which was well named and made her thighs burn, and finally onto the last leg on the heath. Over the bridge across the mixed pond, she ran towards the ladies pond. Even though it was only just gone seven, the pond was already dotted with early-morning swimmers.
Nicely warmed up, Stella stripped to her red swimming costume, shoved her running things into a locker and ventured towards the pond. The air was warm, but the water would be colder, so she braced herself as she stepped down the ladder and submerged herself. Once she’d caught her breath, she swam out, her muscles unfurling and lengthening with every stroke. For once, she was glad of the in-built aloofness of Londoners and was pleased to be left in peace to swim and daydream. When her arms started to tire, she floated on her back and stared up at the blue sky, criss-crossed with trails from high-climbing planes taking people on holiday or to start new lives.
Outside her building, she bent over to catch her breath before opening the door. She’d not bothered with a shower after her swim as there was little point when she was running home. Instead, she’d towelled herself roughly, dragged on her clothes and shoved her wet hair into a hat to stop it snaking around her neck on her return journey. Ernie was busy watering the lobby plants and he raised his watering can on seeing her.
‘Morning, Stella. Been swimming again?’
‘I have, Ernie, but how did you possibly guess?’
‘Got my sources,’ he said, tapping the side of his nose. ‘You been up the ponds again?’
‘Only place to go.’
‘Agreed. Used to go there regular as a young man. Not so keen on the cold water these days, mind. Not with my joints. Miss it something rotten, though.’
He winked and she grinned, not bothering to wait for the lift but trotting straight up the stairs to keep warm. Once inside the flat, she stripped and threw her wet things into the laundry basket then hopped into a welcome hot shower. After blow-drying her hair, she put on some jeans, pulled her pink jumper on over a white t-shirt and went to forage in the kitchen. Ravenous, she toasted a heap of sour-dough bread and smeared it with butter and honey while her coffee brewed, then she carried her breakfast out to the little table on the balcony and watched the world going by, returning occasional waves from the tourists hanging around outside the studio across the road.
During her swim, she’d reached the conclusion that it was finally time that she returned to her old home in Durham. She chewed thoughtfully, filled with trepidation at the idea of raking over the cold embers of her family history. Her flat-sitting agreement generously allowed her a two-night break once a month, so she couldn’t use being stuck in St John’s Wood as an excuse not to go. Over coffee, she opened a hotel booking app and pondered the idea further. Apart from anything, it was hypocritical to counsel her clients to face up their past in readiness for their Saturn return without taking a dose of her own medicine. It was now or never. Before she could change her mind, she booked a city-centre hotel room and rail tickets for the following weekend.
Now that she’d committed herself to going – financially, if not emotionally – she started getting cold feet. Although dreaming of nothing else for years, Stella was also afraid of not being able to cope with the pain of facing so many childhood memories in one go and wondered whether seven days was really long enough to allow her to acclimatise to the idea.
It had to be done though, if she was ever to feel whole and part of something bigger than herself. This journey to the past was a vital part of coming to terms with that past. Closure wasn’t what she was looking for, because she never wanted to forget her family, but she wanted some sort of peace. She picked up her mug in both hands and shivered in spite of the warm coffee and her cosy jumper. This cold was coming from inside her and it would take more than hot drinks and warm clothing to dispel that.
She was jarred from her thoughts by her phone vibrating on the table. It was Benedict. Against her better judgement, she accepted the call. She had to get a grip. Even a double Pisces could surely show some backbone.
‘Stella, I know you’re angry with me, but I’ve no idea why. Please explain it to me. At least give me that. And then once we’ve ironed that out, I promise never to darken your door again, if that’s what you want.’
Although she was still cross with Benedict, Stella was essentially fair-minded and found herself agreeing. If she was completely honest, she wanted to see just how he was going to wriggle out of this one. Knowing the truth would help her to put this troubling episode behind her, and besides, it might help her to figure out why the planets weren’t quite chiming in the way she’d expect. All was definitely not well on the celestial front .
‘Fair enough,’ she said, ‘although I don’t see that it will help.’
‘It’s a bit difficult to talk about on the phone,’ he said. ‘Might we talk in person?’
This sounded like a ploy to win her round, and she started to stiffen.
‘I can be in London in just over an hour, Stella. We can meet wherever you like – at your place or somewhere in town, if you prefer.’
‘Don’t you have work to do? And what about your family?’
‘I’ve no lectures today, and my research can wait for a few hours. Daniel’s grandparents have taken him ice-skating – worrying, I know – and I can easily get to London and back before he’s due home.’
Stella had no client appointments until the evening, so it was no skin off her nose if he wanted to waste his time and money trying to talk her round.
‘Fine, then. Abbey Road. NW8. St John’s Wood to you. Straight opposite the recording studio.’ She told him the name of the building and her flat number. ‘I’ll buzz you in, and if Ernie deems you worthy of admittance, he’ll let you use the lift.’
She didn’t bother to offer any directions, assuming that someone who knew his way around the universe could probably find his way around north-west London without too much trouble.