Melangell Chapter 1 - Pennant Melangell

Excerpt from Chapter I of

a forthcoming novel by Jacko Green

based on the story of St Melangell

Scheduled Publication 2012

Unauthorised copying, printing or other use of this text is forbidden

JENNIFER M Jones, JJ to her friends, lit the incense candle and placed it in the small alcove that served as a shrine in her third floor penthouse in Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love had not lived up to its name in the year since her divorce from Mario. Friends, mainly from Philly's large Italian community, had taken sides, mostly his and despite his philandering.

Their cherished brownstone rowhouse near Chestnut Hill had been sold to divide what was left after a spiteful courtroom wrangle. With no children involved and both in sound careers launched straight from college, the court had exercised the judgement of Solomon. She would not be poor, but half of a modest pool of assets would not set her up for five years, never mind for life.

Aged 33, she still harboured hopes of raising a family, something Mario had never wanted in seven years of marriage. No kids, no pets, mamma's homemade pasta, baseball and beer with the boys at the weekend; his needs had remained simple and unvaried with age.

A month with her older sister Olwen in North Wales, Montgomery County, had helped Jenny to pick up the pieces. She and Olly had spent late nights – and a few lunches - sipping wine, listening to Darryl Hall and John Oates, local-boy-made-good, turned up loud. The sisters cried in a good kind of way.

“Have you been seeing anyone?” Olly asked.

“No. It’s been two years now and I’m beginning to feel like a newly minted virgin! I just can’t trust anyone, Olly. I don’t know if I ever will.”

Olly hugged her and stroked Jenny’s temple as she comforted her. “Honey, I know it sounds trite, but it’s a process, not a destination. You’ll get there. I know you. You’re smart, you’re pretty, you’re sexy, you’re funny. So what’s not to like? There’s someone for everyone. One minute you think you’ll never love again, then wham! Trust me, honey, big sis knows.”

Cradled in her sister’s arms, Jenny grinned. Olly had paraded a string of lovers in the liberal days before HIV. She had seemed genuinely in love with each one, wept when relationships broke down, but grieved quickly and moved on. Fact was though, Olwen was 48, had never married, and was facing old age alone.

“Maybe, maybe,” Jenny said. “I just get a bit low sometimes. Don’t you ever miss the simple things, like a hug last thing at night and first thing in the morning?”

Olly smiled ruefully and rocked her sister to and fro as they finished their drinks in silence. They were 20 and five again. Feeling safe and protected, Jenny felt she would like to stay that way forever, but there was a life to be lived.

One night, they took out the family photo album that has passed into Olly's care on mom's death. They spent hours placing names to faces, remembering holidays and rites of passage. The collection had arrived in a box of books and had remained unsorted.

One picture, a black and white relic that neither sister recalled seeing, showed a person who appeared to be mom, Rhiannon, wearing a tall, silly-looking stovepipe hat, a shawl round her shoulders, and standing next to a small, apparently stuffed, pony.

A little tipsy by then, they hooted with laughter. “Upon my soul,” said JJ, “what, when and where, Olly?”

“I have no idea. Was it a dare or a bet, do you think?” They laughed again. Turning over the old print, Jenny found a photographer's stamp mark. Faint now, but still legible, were a date and name pencilled in: R – Montco - 1928.

“It can't be mom,” she said. “Look, it was shot in 1928. So who is it?”

“Let me see,” Olly said. “Heck, you're right. But she's a dead ringer for mom when she was about 50.”

“True,” Jenny agreed. “It's awesome. Look. That stern stare, but with that little smile at the corner of her lips.”

“I guess we'll never know,” Olwen said. “Mom was the last of the old folks. There's just us now and you know what, Jen, we're going to look after each other, huh?” They hugged, drank a little more, cried some, then went to bed.

When Jenny left, Olwen put the album in her sister's case. “It'll remind you that your family's always here, even if I am all that's left of it,” Olly said. “You just call, any time, any reason. You hear?”

Working pretty much 24/7 had anaesthetised the hurt on Jenny's return from North Penn to the city proper. A fashion for magical realism, spawned by the commercial success of Harry Potter, had resulted in as many commissions as she could handle from publishers.

As an illustrator, she had always been influenced by magic, a passion kindled by childhood visits to the local library where a beautifully bound collection of myths and legends from around the world was a treasure trove to borrow from.

On a whim, she retrieved the shot of the smiling woman in the comical headwear and propped it up next to a framed portrait of mom on the shelf above Jenny's workstation. 'Like peas in a pod,' she thought toherself. A month passed in a blur of work. Jenny was on autopilot but found her attention diverted by The Hat Lady, as she had come to think of her. ''Who are you, when were you, what were you, where were you?'' she found herself asking aloud.

As deadline neared, she approached meltdown and found the enigmatic but engaging smile beneath the hat becoming more challenging, more like a smirk. 'I must be getting cabin fever,' Jenny thought. ‘Get a grip, girl!'

'Get a life!' the smirk seemed to reply. Later, slumped in bed, Jenny conceded that The Hat Lady had a point. No husband, no kids, no boyfriend, no social life, and what future? She felt weepy with weariness and need. She countered it with meditative breathing, but slept fitfully.

In the final week of the commission, she dreamed. She was walking on a mountain high above a narrow valley. The Hat Lady was there: Jenny could sense but not see her. It was twilight going dark. A large, silver moon had risen, its surface features plain enough to encourage belief that there truly was a Man in the Moon.

Someone had lit a fire lower down. Shadows shifted around it, probably warming themselves on a chill spring night. The shriek of what – an owl? - punctuated the calm.

Then she became aware of them: a mass of dark shapes, barely visible, unrecognisable, on the black brow of another hill. The cry rang out again, but died abruptly. Jenny saw the dark mass shift. She shivered with more than cold as hundreds of eyes, lit by the moon, seemed to focus on her alone.

'What are they?' she asked quietly, awestruck. The Hat Lady's reply was a whisper so light it might have been a breath of wind. 'Just lambs, just my little lambs seeking sanctuary. Who will tend my lambs?'

The dream was still vivid in Jenny's mind when she awoke. So vivid that she recorded it in the journal that she kept when things of note or mystery happened in her life. Jenny caught herself stealing more glances than usual at The Hat Lady's picture as finishing touches - a flowing line here, a splash of colour there - were applied to the artwork that was to be submitted two days later.

It begins. I sense the change. She will come. We will dance for her as before. But we will not tell. She should be spared that.