So here I was reading that Lady de Grey loved opera. Loved it so much she wanted to hear it while she was in the bath. Imagine that!
As I continued to read Lady Dyan’s book, I found other references to Lady de Grey. She was insatiably curious, loved to ask people questions and find out about them. She was as at home with the dustman as with the king. She had a great sense of humor and told the most amusing stories; people always wanted to sit next to her at dinner because she kept them laughing.
By the time I got to the end of the book I was shaking. If I’d ever seen myself on paper, I was seeing it.
I was about ready to shut the book when I noticed that there was an epilogue. I almost didn’t read it because in my continuation of finding-myself-infinitely-fascinating I haven’t said much about Lady Dyan. She had two sons, one of whom was a well-read and much-loved poet at an astonishingly young age. The other son had written a novel before he was twenty-one. Both of her sons were killed in World War I.
My best friend, Daria, once said that she had a theory that the problem with the aristocracy of England today was that all the best of their ancestors had been killed in World War I.
The epilogue had a paragraph at the end that said that many people had urged Lady Dyan not to mention Lady de Grey because of what had happened just before she disappeared. She was not someone she should comment on in her book. But Dyan wrote, “Lady de Grey was my friend, a truer friend no woman could have. She was the first to wear the dresses I designed for her and she came to me whenever I needed her. My fervent prayer is that her spirit does not haunt Peniman Manor as people say it does. I pray that she is at peace and is now in heaven looking after my sons until I get there. I stand by what I have said: She was my friend.”
I don’t know why this paragraph sent chills up my spine as it did. Maybe it was the idea of a ghost, I don’t know. But I closed that book with a snap and got out of that library fast.
7
I spent that weekend closeted in my apartment. Usually, when I wrote a book I was at least somewhat detached from it. Oh, maybe I was “in love” with my hero and maybe I got very, very sad when the book was finished, but still, I knew it was a story and not real life.
But now I was getting mixed up. I couldn’t seem to remember whether I was Lady de Grey or Hayden Lane. I sometimes couldn’t remember whether Jamie was real or on paper.
The things Nora had told me hit me much harder than anything a therapist had ever said to me because there was so much truth in them. With every word I read about Lady de Grey I seemed to “remember” more. I seemed to remember the way Jamie turned his head. Was this something I had made up or was I “remembering” what he was really like?
By Monday I still wasn’t in the mood to leave the apartment. In fact, I didn’t seem to be in the mood to live. I didn’t wash my hair; in fact I didn’t bother to dress. I sat in my bathrobe, ate quart after quart of frozen yogurt (in keeping with my illusion that this was “healthier” than ice cream) and watched TV.
An aside here: Why is it that I always seem to meet women who say, “I was so depressed that I ran five miles?” I could say, but don’t, “I was so depressed that I lay on the couch for three days and ate a deep-fried side of beef accompanied by a vat of fries and six quarts of ice cream.” When I get depressed I haven’t the energy to stand up, much less run. All I can do is chew.
Anyway, I ate and watched daytime TV, specifically, American talk shows—which fascinate me like a cobra is fascinated by that moving flute. Why in the world anyone would want to parade their own hatreds and prejudices, not to mention their own peculiarities, before the entire country mystifies me. I sat through “Sisters Who Hate Sisters,” then “Men Who Want to Be Women,” then one about a man who took a life-size rubber doll with him everywhere and his daughters were embarrassed (the man, howev
er, wasn’t and showed the audience “Elaine’s” entire wardrobe).
At 6 P.M., when my brain was pretty much sizzled, I saw a show about past life regression. It was about people who have been hypnotized so they can see who they were in past lives.
I sat on the edge of my seat during the whole show. I’d like to be able to say that I stopped eating but in reality I ate at double speed. Something Nora had said was haunting me. You could have him if you could change the past.
I was on the phone to Nora almost before I could swallow the last of the butter pecan yogurt, then had to try again and again to get through to her. I’d rather try to get the President of the United States on the phone than Nora. What kind of problems could people have that made them need a psychic so desperately? (Wisely, I did not look into my own situation in this thought.)
When I did get her, it took me only minutes to explain what I wanted to know. Under hypnosis, could I go back in time and see Jamie?
Her long silence made me so nervous that I started talking at about a hundred words a minute. I told her that I really needed to do this in order to write my book. I had so many questions: What caused Lady de Grey to disappear? Why did her husband die on the same day? Why didn’t they have any children?
I rattled on and on, as much to myself as to her. In the midst of all the lunacy of what I had been learning in the past weeks I wanted to inject some logic. There was no such thing as past lives, of course, so no one could “go back,” but if they could maybe I could do it for scientific research. Well, okay, maybe romance novels aren’t exactly “scientific” but a good story is worth a lot, isn’t it?
“You must not do this,” Nora said at last.
“What? Do what?”
“You are too unhappy to return.”
I swear this woman was going to make me crazy! “I’m not talking about ‘returning.’ I just want to hover around and see…” Jamie is what I wanted to say. To just look into his eyes. To see what it was like to look into the eyes of a man who was the other half of me. “I want to see what the Edwardian age was really like. I want—”
“If you go back you might want to remain there,” Nora said. “You have nothing to pull you back to the present time.”
“I have a book contract and due dates and a desk covered with bills that need to be paid,” I said, joking.
But Nora didn’t laugh. “You must not do this. You must promise me. It is dangerous.”
“But there’s a possibility that she’s a ghost!”
“Ghosts are very unhappy spirits and you are not the one to deal with them,” she said sternly.