Death in Disguise

Chapter 1

Breakfast was nearly over. The Master, who rose to commence his meditation and orisons at sunrise, was never present at this meal - settling instead for a tisane and a caraway biscuit in the Solar once his chakras had been cleansed and recharged. And, beloved though he might be - even worshipped on occasion, (although he would have been the first to rebuke such exuberant nonsense) - there was no doubt that his absence engendered a certain easing of restraint. The little group at the long refectory table was on the point of becoming quite frolicsome.

‘And what are you two getting up to this afternoon, Heather?’ asked Arno, removing a speck of yogurt from his beard with a hand-woven napkin. He referred to the single free period that their chores and devotions allowed.

‘We’re going up to Morrigan’s Ridge.’ Heather Beavers spoke with the eager breathlessness of a little girl, although her hair was long and grey. ‘There’s a monolith there with the most amazing vibrations. We hope to unlock the cosmic energy.’

‘Be careful,’ said Arno quickly. ‘Make sure you take an amulet.’

‘Of course.’ Ken and Heather both touched the pyrite crystals suspended from a leather headband and resting, like a third eye, in the centre of their foreheads.

‘Last time we had an energy release Hilarion came through with the most incredible power-packed information. He just ... effloresced. Didn’t he, Ken?’

‘Mmm.’ Ken spoke indistinctly through a mouthful of bran and Bounty of the Hedgerow compote. ‘Described our next thousand lives plus an outline of Mars’ inter-galactic war plans. Going to be really hot come the millennium.’

‘And you, Janet. Do you have any plans?’

‘It’s such a lovely day I thought I’d take the bus to Causton. May needs some more tapestry needles. Perhaps you’d like to come, Trixie.’ She looked across at the girl sitting next to Arno who did not reply. Janet stumbled on. ‘We could go into the park afterwards and have an ice.’

The long bony face was lean and hungry. Always either quite blank or flaring with emotion, it seemed incapable of expressing ambiguity. Janet had pale, light eyes, the pupils almost colourless, and coarse wiry hair like an Irish wolf-hound. Arno averted his gaze from all that longing. Enslaved himself by Miss Cuttle’s grand bosom and liquefacient gaze, he appreciated acutely enslavement in others and poor Janet was a perfect example of subjugation brought to a pretty heel.

Receiving no response, she now got up and began to stack the bulgy, smearily patterned cereal bowls. They were the unfortunate results of her Usefulness Training in the pottery when she had first arrived. She loathed the blasted things and always handled them roughly, hoping for a reduction in numbers, but they remained obstinately indestructible. Even Christopher, slapdashing his way through May’s Daisy Chain Spode, washed them up without mishap.

‘As it’s Suhami’s birthday no doubt you have some treat in store.’ Arno smiled shyly at the young man opposite, for everyone knew how sweetly the land lay in that direction.

‘Well ...’ Usually amiable and open-faced, Christopher appeared ill at ease. ‘There seems to be an awful lot going on already.’

‘But you’ll be wanting to take her out? Maybe on the river?’

Christopher did not reply and Janet laughed, a forced rough sound with a scrape of malice, pinching some coarse brown breadcrumbs into a little pellet with her bony fingers. Frequently told as a child that she had pianist’s hands, she had never cared to put the supposition to the test.

‘Don’t you believe in romance then, Jan?’ Trixie laughed, too, but merrily, shaking out a mop of blonde curls. Shiny pink lips and thick sooty lashes gave her the look of an expensive china doll.

Janet got up and started to brush some spilled muesli towards the edge of the table. This was so old that the two halves had begun to warp, shrinking away from each other. A few nuts disappeared through the gap and rolled around on the wooden floor. She decided to be unskilful (the word used by the community to denote behaviour liable to cause a breach of the peace), and leave them there. Trixie tilted her chair back, glanced slyly down and made a tutting sound, her rosebud mouth in a kissy pout.

Janet took the bowls away, came back with a dustpan and brush and crawled under the table, the bare boards hurting her knees. Ten feet. Male: two Argyle socks - felted with much washing and smelling faintly of camphorated oil - two white cotton, two beige terry towelling and six sturdy sandals. Female: purple lace-up felt bootees embroidered with cabbalistic signs. Mickey Mouse sneakers over socks so brief they barely reached pert, delicate ankles. Jeans were rolled up to just below the knee and, on lately shaven calves, stubble glinted like gold wire.

Janet’s heart pounded as she glanced at, then quickly looked away from the blue-white milky limbs and fine breakable ankle bones. You could crush them as easily as the rib cage of a bird. The brush slipped and swirled in a suddenly sweaty hand. She reached out, briefly touching near-transparent skin, before pushing the Mickey Mice aside.

‘Mind your feet everyone.’ Aiming for casual busyness she sounded only gruff.

‘And you, Arno?’ asked Christopher.

‘I shall carry on with Tim,’ replied Arno. He got up, collecting the square, stone salt cellars and horn spoons. ‘We’re working on a new straw hood for the hive.’ Every member of the community was artisanally virtuous.

‘You take such trouble,’ said Heather. The words were shrill little pipes. A gymslip of a voice.

‘Oh well ... you know ...’ Arno appeared embarrassed.

‘We had a little astro-ceremony for him last night, didn’t we Heather?’ said Ken.

‘Mmm. We held him in the light for ever so long.’

‘Then we offered the auric centre of his being to Lady Portia - the pale gold master of serenity.’

They were so unshakeably positive. Arno said ‘thank you’ not knowing what else to say. Neither the Beavers for all their ring of bright confidence, nor the Lady Portia could help Tim. No one should. He could be loved and that was all. It was a great deal of course, but it was not enough to lead him from the shadows.

But it would be useless, Arno knew, to point this out. It would be unkind too, for Ken and Heather had brought the practice of positive thinking to a state-of-the-art meridian. No naughty darkling hesitancies for them. If one peeped out it was swept back under the carpet p.d.q. This refusal to acknowledge the grey, let alone black, side of life made them supremely complacent. A problem was barely described before the answer was on the table. Postulation. Simplification. Solution. Each stage liberally laced with Compassion. Soft-centred, honey-coated and as simple as that.

Trixie dragged her chair back, saying: ‘I’m glad I’m not on kitchen rota for the grand occasion tonight. I can have a nice long drink in The Black Horse instead. I’m sure we’re all going to need one.’

Ken and Heather Beavers smiled indulgently at this roguish whimsy. No one at the commune had ever been into the village pub. Janet emerged and got up rubbing her knees.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Arno. ‘About needing a drink.’

‘Mr Gamelin. Don’t tell me you’d forgotten his visit.’

‘Of course not.’ Arno now collected the plastic washing-up bowl from which everyone had helped themselves to muesli. One of the community rules was: Never leave The Table Empty-Handed, and, although this occasionally meant something vanishing before anyone had had a chance to make use of it, on the whole the system worked very well. ‘Will you be making your Quark soufflé Heather?’

‘I thought I wouldn’t in case he’s late. You know what tycoons are.’ She spoke with rueful authority as if hot-foot from the Stock Exchange.

‘We thought the three-bean lasagne,’ said Ken stroking his comanchero moustache.

‘That is certainly very filling.’

‘Then use up the Quark with some stewed pears. Beat in some of Calypso’s yogurt if it won’t stretch.’

‘Excellent.’ Arno beamed as if it really was and thought, there’s always the birthday cake.

‘I bet he’ll buy her an amazing present,’ said Trixie.

‘What they really like, ruthless tycoons,’ said Janet, ‘is tearing into a big red steak.’

‘Quite a father-in-law you’ve chosen Christopher.’ Ken and his crystal twinkled across the table.

Christopher said: ‘Let’s not get carried away,’ and started to collect the cutlery.

‘Well he won’t get a steak here.’ Heather shuddered. ‘How do you know he’s ruthless anyway, Jan?’ Janet hated being called ‘Jan’. Except by Trixie.

‘I saw him on the box ages ago. One of those studio discussions. The Money Programme I think it was. He ate the lot of them up in the first five minutes then started on the table.’

‘Now, now,’ chided Arno. He had not seen the programme. There was no television at the Manor House because of the negative vibes.

But Janet remembered it well. That square powerful figure thrusting forward as if about to smash its way through the screen, crackling with aggression. Head held low and to one side, motionless like a bull about to charge. ‘I wish he wasn’t coming.’

‘Stay mellow.’ Ken waved his hands up and down, diminuendo. ‘Don’t forget. Not only is there one of him and ten of us, but we are standing in the light of the divine ocean of consciousness. We understand there is no such thing as anger.’

‘He wouldn’t have been invited you know,’ said Arno when Janet still looked worried, ‘if the Master had not thought it wise.’

‘The Master is very unworldly.’

‘Gamelin doesn’t realise the challenging situation he’s coming into,’ chuckled Ken. ‘It’ll be a golden opportunity for him to change his karma. And if he’s half the man you reckon, Janet, he’ll jump at it.’

‘What I don’t understand,’ said Trixie, ‘is why Suhami didn’t tell us until the other day who she really is.’

‘Can’t you?’ Janet gave another unamused laugh. ‘I can.’

‘Just as well,’ continued Trixie, ‘that Chris had already started declaring his intentions. Otherwise she might think he was only after her money.’

A sudden silence greeted this intemperate remark, then Christopher, tight-mouthed, picked up the knives and forks, said ‘excuse me’ and left the room.

‘Honestly Trixie ...’

‘It was only a joke. I don’t know ...’ She stomped off without carrying as much as an eggspoon. ‘No sense of humour in this place.’

Now Ken struggled to his feet. He had ‘a leg’ which stopped him doing quite as much as he would have liked around the house and garden. Some days (especially if rain was forecast) it was worse than others. This morning he hardly limped at all. He picked up the breadboard, saying ‘No peace for the wicked.’

‘They wouldn’t know what to do with it if there was,’ said Janet, and Heather put on her patient Griselda face.

Janet was Heather’s cross and a great challenge. She was so left-brained; so intellectual. It had been difficult at first for Heather to cope. Until one day, appealed to, Ken’s spirit guide Hilarion had explained that Janet was the physical manifestation of Heather’s own animus. How grateful Heather had been to learn this! It not only made absolute sense but brought about an even deeper feeling of caring commitment. Now, using a tone of exaggerated calm she said: ‘I think we’d better get on.’

Left alone with Janet, Arno looked at her with some concern. He was afraid he intuited some sort of appeal in the whiteness of her face and the strained rigidity of her hands and arms as she hung on to the dustpan. He wished to do the right thing. Everyone at The Lodge was supposed to be available for counselling at any time of the day or night and Arno, although he was by nature rather fastidious about the spilling of his own emotions, always tried to be open and receptive if needed by others. However there were resonances here which disturbed him deeply and that he did not understand. Nevertheless ...

‘Is there something worrying you, Janet? That you would like to share?’

‘What do you mean?’ She was immediately on the defensive, as if goaded. ‘There’s nothing. Nothing at all.’ She was irritated by the word ‘share’, implying as it did an automatic willingness to receive.

‘I’m sorry.’ Arno backtracked, unoffended. His freckled countenance glazed over with relief.

‘Unless you go around with a permanent grin on your face, people keep asking you what your problem is.’

‘It’s well meant -’

But Janet was leaving, her angular shoulder blades stiff with irritation. Arno followed more slowly, making his way to the great hall. It appeared empty. He looked around. ‘Tim ...?’ He waited then called again but no one came. The boy had lately found himself a quite impregnable retreat and Arno, appreciating Tim’s need to be safe and lie securely hidden, made no attempt to seek him out. When the Master emerged from his devotions, Tim also would show himself - following in his beloved benefactor’s footsteps as naturally as any shadow. And crouching at his feet when he halted like a faithful hound.

So Arno put the beehive hood aside for another day. Then he made his way down the long passage to where the Wellingtons, galoshes and umbrellas were kept, found his old jacket and panama hat, and disappeared to work in the garden.

After everyone had gone and the main house was quiet Tim appeared, edging his way into the hall.

Here, in the centre of the ceiling, was a magnificent, octagonal stained-glass lantern thrusting skywards forming part of the roof. On bright days brilliant beams of multicoloured light streamed through the glass, spreading over the wooden floor a wash of deep rose and amber, rich mulberry, indigo and soft willow green. As the clouds now obscured and now revealed the sun, so the colours would glow more or less intensely, giving the illusion of shifting, flowing life. This area of quite magical luminosity had a compelling fascination for Tim. He would stand in it, slowly turning and smiling with pleasure at the play of kaleidoscopic patterns on his skin and clothes as he bathed in the glow. Now he was poised beneath a powdery haze of dust motes suspended in the radiance. He saw them as a cloud of tiny insects: glittery-winged harmless little things.

Sometimes he dreamed about the lantern. In these dreams he was always in motion, occasionally swimming upwards, parting the spreading shiny light with webbed fingers, pressing it behind him, kicking out. But more often, he would be flying. Then, weightless in a weightless world, his body would soar and spin and dive, looping the rainbow loop. Once he had been accompanied by a flock of bright birds with kind eyes and soft unthreatening beaks. Waking after a lantern dream he would sometimes be filled with a terrible sense of fear and loss. He would spring out of bed then and race on to the landing to check that it was still there.

When Tim had first been brought to the Manor House and it had been impossible to persuade him to take any food, the Master, seeing the transforming effect of the dancing colours, had had two cushions brought and placed on the hall floor. Then, sitting with the boy, he had coaxed him to eat as one does a child - a spoonful at a time on the ‘one for me and one for you’ principle. He had kept this up for nearly two weeks. Tim was better now of course. He sat at the table with everyone else and played his part in the community as well as he was able, struggling with his allotted simple tasks.

But he never stopped being frightened. And now, when a door on the landing opened, even though it was only Trixie going to the bathroom, Tim ran like the wind to the nearest fox-hole and once more hid himself away.

In the Solar the Master sat, a tisane of fresh mint-and-lemon balm in his hand. Suhami, who had asked to see him urgently, seemed in no hurry to speak now that she was here. Being in the Master’s presence frequently affected people so. Whatever disturbance of mind or body drove them to seek his counsel, they would find hardly had they come before him than the matter did not seem so urgent after all.

And in any case thought Suhami as she rested upon her cushion, spine supple and elegantly straight, it was now too late for words. The damage had been done. She looked at her teacher. At his delicate hands, enrapt features and thin shoulders. It was impossible to be angry with him; foolish to expect him to understand. He was so guileless, his concerns purely of a spiritual nature. He was in love (Janet had once said) with the ideal of purity and so saw goodness everywhere. Suhami pictured her father, soon to be on his dreadful juggernauting way, and her distress returned, keen as before.

Guy Gamelin was about as spiritual as a charging rhino and had been known to leave an equivalent amount of chaos in his wake. The Master could not possibly imagine a person so volatile; so alarming when thwarted; so consumed by massive gobbling greed. For he thought there was that of God in everyone and all you had to do to reach it was to be patient and love them.

‘I would not have suggested this visit,’ (she was quite used to the Master reading her mind), ‘if I didn’t think the time was right.’ When Suhami remained silent, he continued: ‘It is time to heal, child. Let all this bitterness go. It will only do you harm.’

‘I do try.’ She said, as she had a dozen times over the past week, ‘I just don’t see why he has to come here. I shan’t change my mind about the money if that’s what’s behind it.’

‘Oh, let’s not start on that again.’ He smiled. ‘I know an impasse when I see one.’

‘If you won’t take it, it will go to charity.’ She added quickly, ‘You don’t know what it does to people, Master. They look at you, think of you differently. Already -’ Her face changed, becoming apprehensive. Soft and blurred. Her mouth trembled.

‘Already?’

‘You ... haven’t told anyone? About the trust fund?’

‘Of course not, since that was your wish. But don’t you think your parents -’

‘My mother isn’t coming. He wrote saying she was ill.’

‘That may well be true.’

‘No.’ She shook her head savagely. ‘She didn’t want to come. She wouldn’t even pretend.’

‘A visit on that basis would be worthless. Be brave Suhami - don’t seek false satisfactions. Or demand that others comfort and sustain you. That’s neither fair on you or them. You have everything you need right here ...’ And he laid his fingers to his heart. ‘How many times do I have to say this?’

‘It’s easy for you.’

‘It is never easy.’

He was right about that. Only once at meditation had she come anywhere near understanding what ‘everything you need’ really meant. She had been sitting for just over an hour and had experienced first a deep intensification of the silence then an extraordinary gathering of attention which she felt as a strong energetic pulse. Then there was a moment of luminous stillness so sublime that it seemed all her human-ness, all the mess and pain and hope and loss that made up Suhami, vanished - subsumed into some inner core of certain light. A blink of an eye and it was gone. She had mentioned it to no one but the Master who had simply warned her against any zealous seeking of further such experiences. Naturally she had been unable to resist such attempts but it had never happened again.

A year ago she had not even known he was alive and still occasionally experienced deep tremors of alarm when recalling the haphazard manner of their meeting. If a left turn had been taken instead of a right ...

She had been with half a dozen acquaintances in a wine bar off Red Lion Square. It was during the Happy Hour - that early-evening hiatus when the lonely, disaffected and dispossessed can swill themselves into oblivion for half the going rate. They were all smashed, flicking aubergine dip around with bread sticks. Asked to leave, refusing, being threatened with the police was nothing new. They racketed off, arms linked, shouting, forcing people off the pavement in Theobald Road.

It was Perry who’d seen the poster attached to a board by a shabby doorway. The words ‘LOVE, LIGHT & PEACE’ were prominent as was a large photograph of a middle-aged man with long white hair. For no reason this struck them as hysterically funny. Jeering and snorting with contemptuous laughter, they charged up the worn, mica-freckled steps and through some swing doors.

They found themselves in a small room, sparsely occupied, with a platform at one end. The audience was mostly women, mostly elderly. A few earnest-looking men with rucksacks or carrier bags. One wore a cap with a transparent plastic cover. He kept pursing his lips judiciously and shaking his head, making it plain he was not to be easily impressed. Everyone turned at the disruption and several people ‘tutted’ and sucked their teeth.

The newcomers clattered along the row of tip-back seats and sat hoisting their feet up. They were reasonably quiet for about five minutes then Perry crossed his eyes in warning preparation and let out a long succulent raspberry. The others shrieked and giggled, stuffing fists into their mouths like naughty children. They put on po faces as people stared and Perry shouted: ‘It was him with his hat in a bag.’

Ten minutes later, bored with the game, they got up and left, mocking the man on the platform, kicking the seats on their way out. Reaching the swing doors, one of them - Sylvie - turned and looked back. Half a step away from chaos (as she was later to recognise), something had compelled this movement. She returned to sit quietly on the wooden seat, heedless of raucous beckoning shouts from the stairwell.

The address had soaked into her, warm and soothing as honey balm. Afterwards she had been amazed that an evening which had so utterly transformed her life was so hard to recall in detail. The only complete sentence she remembered was: ‘We are all standing in our own light.’ Although she’d had no perception as to what the words actually meant they’d struck her then (and did still) as immeasurably profound and consoling. Even in those first moments she had been aware of a longing to take that sideways step away from her old tawdry self. To crack open and shed the carapace of a loveless and ugly past. Those hate-filled drunken days and love-starved nights.

When the talk was over the speaker put on a coat over his long blue robe. In this he was assisted by a small bearded man. Then he drank a little water and stood, looking over the rows of empty seats to where the girl sat. He smiled and she got up and moved towards him, feeling (although she could not then have described it so) the pull of sheer disinterested goodness. She seemed to sense in the slight figure an overwhelming concern for her wellbeing. The sheer novelty of such a situation struck her as unbearably poignant and she began to weep.

The Master watched her approach. He saw a thin tall girl in a lewd outfit. A gleaming silver cake-frill of a skirt and halter top no wider than two ribbons. She had a wild fuzz of pale hair, eyes smearily ringed with kohl and a scarlet jammy mouth. She smelt of gin and strong perfume and sour embittered dreams. As she lurched closer her sobs became more raucous and by the time she reached the dais she was shouting; terrible wails of grief and woe. ‘Ahhh ... ahhhh.’ Rocking on high sparkly heels, arms folded tight across her barely covered breasts, she stood and howled.

So long ago now it was hard for her to recall the intensity of that despair. She reached out and took her companion’s glass.

‘Do you want some more tea, Master?’

‘No. Thank you.’

There was a deep crevice between his brows. He looked tired. Worse - Suhami noticed the drooping skin beneath his eye - he looked old. She could not bear the thought that he was vulnerable to the passing of time. For was he not the fount of all wisdom, the never-ending source of blessings? He was there to love and protect them all. If anything happened to him ...

As she moved towards the door, Suhami realised that knowing someone was mortal and truly comprehending it were two different things. She had convinced herself he would be there for them for ever. She thought of Tim. What would he do without his beloved protector and companion? What would any of them do? A spasm of fear seized her and she ran back and pressed his hand to her cheek.

‘What on earth is it?’

‘I don’t want you to die.’

She thought he would smile and tease her out of her distress but he simply said: ‘But we must. All of us.’

‘Aren’t you afraid?’

‘No. Not now.’ And he withdrew his hand. ‘I would have been ... before. But not now.’

I am afraid, thought Suhami. And her face was deeply troubled as she left him.

Flowing from an open casement on the ground floor of the house came a torrent of glorious sound. May seated at her cello, legs sturdily apart, size eights planted firmly on sea-grass matting, was playing the Boccherini Sonata. The bow swept back and forth with fierce élan. Two deep furrows tugged at her thick brows and her eyes were tightly closed. She tossed her head in such an excess of passionate dedication that transparent pearls of sweat flew sparkling through the warm air and one of her plaits, coiled like an auburn saucer over her ear, became loose, swinging vigorously back and forth in three-four time.

She was wearing a loose gown, tie-dyed gamboge and maroon showing the pyramids and a burial cortège sideways on. Not one of the print room’s more successful efforts. A mistake had been made with the blocks so that at one point the funeral party - corpse, camels, mourners et al - had done a volte-face, colliding with the forward-looking lot head-on.

Above the bateau neckline of this voluminous shift rose May’s splendid profile. Cleanly etched, serene, noble, unambiguous in its dedication to the spreading of happiness and health, it was also most attention-catching for May adorned her face as she did her room, her person and every single artefact she owned, which is to say prodigiously. And her palette was as comprehensive as her brush was generous. Cheeks bloomed wanton coral, full lips shiny pomegranate red. Eyelids bright green shading into a blend of sky blue and plum, occasionally patterned with silver dust. Her tea-rose complexion sometimes had quite a solid bloom for, occasionally distracted by other-worldly musings, she would forget she had already put on her foundation and would impasto on a further layer before finishing off with a generous dusting of Coty American Tan.

Now, after a final buoyant flourish of the bow, she laid her hand upon the strings to still their vibration. Was there any other instrument, she wondered, any other creature that could grunt with elegance? She rested her cheek briefly against the glowing wood, leaving a dusty peach-brown imprint, then leaned the cello against her chair and in all her calicoed splendour billowed across to the window.

She stood gazing out at the cedar tree, struggling to maintain the sensation of joyful calm that had possessed her whilst playing. But she had no sooner noted such feelings than joy became mere happiness, and pleasure transmuted quickly into a dullish lack of ease. May sighed and, for comfort, wrenched her thoughts to her recent colour workshop ‘There’s A Rainbow Round Your Shoulder’, which had been over-subscribed and very well received. But even this stratagem was only partially successful. Visions of uplifted participants all thinking aquamarine faded despite all her best efforts to the contrary, and the shadow of anxiety returned. She realised she was not even looking forward to her coming regression and these were often most exciting occasions.

May was extremely cross that this should be so. She didn’t have a lot of patience with folk who ‘mooned about’ as she put it. Fretting over this and that, refusing to get to grips with the problem, never mind putting it right. Rather self-indulgent she thought that sort of thing. Now she was doing it herself. And really without excuse, for there was certainly no shortage of people to go and talk to. Unfortunately one of them (she didn’t know which) was the cause of her concern. She would have liked to turn to the Master even though it was not usual to bother him with temporal matters. The fact that in this instance she could not caused her genuine distress. It was as if a constantly reliable source of warmth and light had been unkindly doused. She felt not only bereft but also rejected - which she knew to be unreasonable. The difficulty was that her beloved guru - innocently and unwittingly she was sure - was partially to blame for this sense of unease.

It had happened like this. Two days after Jim died May had been passing the Master’s chamber on her way to the laundry room. Although the door was ajar his beautiful passe-partout zodiac screen was positioned in such a way as to conceal any occupants. Low voices were chuntering on, stopping, starting again and May assumed a spiritual-growth stroke chakra-cleansing session was in progress. Then, suddenly a voice cried out: ‘Oh God - why couldn’t you have left well alone! If they do a postmor -’ A vigorous shushing cut this short.

The resulting silence seemed to May, standing as if bolted to the floor, quite stifling. Of a smothered, tightly wrapped quality. Then she understood from the rustle of a robe, rather than any footfall, that someone was coming around the screen. She jumped aside just in time, flattening herself against the corridor wall, and the door was firmly closed.

Trembling with surprised distress, May continued to stand there. She had hardly recognised the Master’s voice, so choked had it been with emotion. Whether anger or fear it was hard to say. Could have been either. Or both. She struggled to persuade herself that she had misunderstood or that the words, taken out of context (and she had heard none of the context), could have quite a different meaning from the one apparent. But to what could the words ‘post mortem’ apply except Jim’s death? The inference was surely inescapable.

In the laundry room, pouring ecologically sound enzyme-free pale green washing granules, May silently railed against the malevolent sprite who had directed her steps that morning. For, like the majority of the community, she firmly believed that the shape and disposition of her day was ordered not by herself but by her stars and she couldn’t say she’d not been warned. Zurba, moon of Mars, had been skidding about from here to breakfast all week.

When the time came to take out the dripping piles of brilliantly coloured washing, May couldn’t help reflecting on the contrast between their freshly rinsed unstained perfection and her own darkly blemished thoughts.

And then, about a month after this, another almost equally disturbing thing occurred. She had been awoken in the middle of the night by a soft bump in Jim’s room, which was next to her own. This was quickly followed by two more as if a chest of drawers was gently being opened and closed. May had heard someone moving around there on a couple of occasions during the day but had thought nothing of it, assuming that whoever it was would be about the sad task of sorting out Jim’s things preparatory to their disposal. But this nocturnal prowling was something else. Guessing at burglars, she had bravely taken up her heaviest tome (New Maps of Atlantis and Her Intergalactic Logoi), crept along the corridor and, holding her breath, with fingers pinched tight around the handle, gently tried Jim’s door. It was locked.

Silent though her pressure had been, May heard a sudden flurry of movement. Although alarmed she stood firm, holding New Maps high above her head. But the door remained closed. Uncertain what to do next, still listening, she heard a metallic grating sound and realised it was the window latch. She rushed back to her room but by the time she had put down the book and reached her own window it was too late. Next door’s casement gaped wide and she was convinced she saw a shadow, a dark disturbance, at the end of the terrace.

This made her rethink her assumption that the next step would be to raise the alarm. For whoever it was had not made for the street and the outside world. It would have been easy enough for them to do so for, like many other large Elizabethan houses, the Manor was only a modest distance from the main village street. There had been a bit of half-hearted vandalism a few months before, (some bulbs uprooted, rubbish thrown in the pond) and the Lodge had purchased a halogen lamp which switched itself on after dusk if a person or vehicle appeared on or near the drive. It was not on now.

Doubly disturbed, May rested on her window seat and gazed out into the perfumed night uncomforted by the rich complexity of garden scents or shining perfection of low hanging stars. It was a moment of extreme isolation for her. Not the bleak, four-in-the morning intensification of solitude when the possible time and manner of one’s death presses like a blindfold on the mind. Hers was a humbler but no less terrible sensation. She had discovered that in her Eden - for so happy was she at the Golden Windhorse no other name would do - was a serpent. Double-faced and -hearted, double-tongued.

Who it was she as yet had no idea, but she believed - no, she knew - that the person fleeing from Jim’s room had reentered the house. Her mind backtracked to that earlier disturbing snatch of conversation. She was convinced, even whilst chiding herself for such dramatic silliness, that the two incidents were connected. The temptation was to put them both aside. Carry on as usual in the hope that nothing else peculiar would happen, then in time the whole thing must surely fade from mind. The phrase ‘mind your own business’ was perhaps not entirely inappropriate here. But that sort of attitude was completely against the ethos of the community. The whole point of living in such a way was that everyone constantly minded everyone else’s business. That’s what caring was all about.

And so May’s thoughts treadmilled back to the well-worn theme of the mystery prowler and the mystery voice. Fretful and distracted, she had been tightly pleating her skirt. Now, released, the camels sprang forth giving a more than fair impression of a living caravan.

If only she had been able to learn the sex of the person the Master was addressing. She would then simply have confided in someone of the opposite gender.

She jumped to her feet almost growling with crossness, for May could not bear to think there was something wrong that couldn’t be fixed. She started to pace up and down, calling silently but with great force on Kwan-Yin, the pale peach lady master, under whose guidance and sublime patronage she had been placed during a charming ceremony involving a basket of fruit, some folds of clean white linen and an extremely substantial cheque. But although from then on Kwan-Yin had never stinted when it came to giving advice and firing off mother-of-pearl rays to refresh and comfort, today she remained absolutely unforthcoming.

Arno was hoeing the broad beans and struggling with his koän. It was a very difficult koän, having been set originally by the Zen master Bac An. ‘What is the sound,’ the great sage had inquired, ‘of one hand clapping?’

Step by rational-thinking step would, Arno knew, avail him naught. Illumination according to the Teach Yourself Satori shelves of the library (Theo/Psych/Myth: Oriental Sub-Section 4:17), though sudden and blinding, would be vouchsafed only after months - perhaps years - of gruelling meditation and reflection. And that wasn’t the half of it. The disciple must closely attend to every moment of every day, living always with full awareness and one hundred per cent physical, mental and spiritual involvement in any undertaking no matter how humble. Arno had many little ploys to trick him back into the present when attention strayed which it did all the time. Now he pinched his arm to banish daydreaming and concentrated once more on the weeds. He grasped the handle, wholly experiencing the satiny warm wood, stared intently at the rusty blade and scrutinised the minute white flowers of the chickweed. Even the dark-tipped stamens were assiduously noted.

Arno did all this with no feelings of pleasure. Descartes’ notion of man as master and proprietor of nature struck no answering chord in his breast. He did not enjoy or understand the garden at all. It seemed to plot ensnarement, being full of grasping brambles and secret squishy places cunningly concealed beneath firm-looking grass. It was full of insects too: leather-jackets and chafer grubs; pea thrips and eelworm. All strongly motivated and growing fat on Arno’s vegetables which, truth to tell, were not much cop to start with. Having no idea of soil husbandry he planted carrots in clay, beans in soggy ground and potatoes over and over in the same plot.

He was aware of course that such agricultural ignorance could be remedied and had at one point bought a book for the purpose. It was very thick and crammed with black and white drawings, many of them illustrating to perfection Arno’s scabbed, forked and furry emblements. Boredom smothered his mind the moment he first glanced upon the closely packed hectoring paragraphs and the volume quickly got lost behind balls of twine and old seed packets at the back of the potting shed.

Naturally he had remonstrated when given the position of gardener, assuring the nominations committee that he had no talent at all in such a direction. But that, it was patiently explained, was the whole reason behind the allocation. His own wishes must not be secondary, not even last, but of no account whatsoever. No pandering to the ego (that slavering, ravenous beast). No picking and choosing. To grow in grace was to shrink in self-interest and there were no short cuts. Arno sighed and winkled out a bit more groundsel.

But then all irritation vanished for, humming across the lawns and pond and the rhododendron walk, came a mellifluent flow of sound. Arno put aside his hoe so as to give the music played by the darling of his heart his full and rapt attention. One of Arno’s deepest fears was that if by some miracle his ego, constantly starved of accedence to its desires, withered away entirely, his love for May would disappear as well - taking with it all cause for future joy.

It had been borne upon him gradually that he would never speak of his magnificent obsession. This wasn’t always the case. When he had first arrived, not having grasped the full splendour of May’s bountiful personality and remarkable musical gifts, and possessed by a wistful lust for attention, he had presumed to press his artless suit. This had consisted of a series of overtures so quiet, subtle and introspective that no one noticed them, least of all May. And this despite her penchant for divination.

But realising quite quickly that his ambition had wildly overleapt itself and that his beloved was one of those extraordinary beings put upon this earth not for the comfort of one solitary soul but of all mankind, Arno withdrew to settle, almost content, for a lifetime of devoted service.

He had so nearly missed knowing her at all having arrived at the Golden Windhorse by a very chancey and roundabout route. He was quite alone in the world, his mother with whom he had lived since his father ran away thirty years before, having recently died. The protracted and undeservedly cruel manner of her death, for she was the gentlest soul alive, had left him bitter, lonely and in despair. After the funeral he had shut himself away in the little terraced house in Eltham like a wounded animal. He practised only the minimum grooming and feeding necessary to stay alive and look reasonably presentable when going out for food. Apart from shop assistants he saw no one for weeks at a time for he had given up his job at the Water Board Authority to nurse his mother in the last stages of her illness.

Most days he would lie curled up in bed, a ball of dark steely pain, his cheeks slobbered with tears. Salt water ran into his ears, his nose clogged and his throat was sore. His mother’s friends, and she’d had many, would tap on the window and occasionally, meeting him abroad, ask him around for meals. Sometimes he found little cardboard boxes containing tins of soup and instant whip on his doorstep. Weeks went by when he hardly got up. The blinds were permanently drawn and day ran into night ran into day with merely a rim of brightness round the window frame to indicate which was which. Once he had found himself frying bacon at what he thought was breakfast time only to discover it was three in the morning.

Then, one afternoon, he started to read again. He had made some coffee but instead of slumping back on to the bed as usual to drink it, he had sat up at the kitchen table, opened some Bourbon biscuits from one of the gift boxes and picked up Little Dorrit. He and his mother had both loved the Victorian novelists although she had preferred Trollope.

Later that day, having finished shopping he’d called in at the second-hand bookshop and spent some time browsing in the philosophical section. He supposed now, looking back, that he had been hoping to obtain some insight into the reason for his mother’s prolonged agony. He didn’t of course. He took half a dozen volumes home but they were either so abstruse he could not make head nor tail of them or so glib and silly that they would have made him laugh had he been capable.

Shortly after this he attended several spiritual meetings where although his mother did not ‘come through’, he had obtained a degree of comfort, paradoxically by observing the suffering of others. Several people present had lost young children and the sight of their anguish and the small toys they sometimes brought along to encourage the shades of their dear infants to draw nigh helped Arno put his own bereavement in perspective. His mother had, after all, been nearly eighty and by her own admission tired of life.

And so, gradually, the sharper edge of Arno’s misery was transformed into a dull bearable ache. But his loneliness remained, unassuaged by the shallow day-to-day exchanges that were his lot. He yearned timidly for a wider, more intimate acquaintance whilst being unsure quite how to bring this state of affairs about. His only hobby was reading so he could hardly follow the ubiquitous advice to join a club whose members shared his interests. Even so he felt the vague cautious friendliness he was starting to feel vis-à-vis the wider world should be encouraged, so he signed up for a Literary Appreciation course at the nearest technical college.

But then, walking home from the enrolment evening, he had called into Nutty Notions for some honey and seen a card on the noticeboard advertising a psychic weekend ‘Hearing From Your Loved One’. Whether it was the nursery comfort of the words ‘loved one’ or simply the idea of a weekend away from the cheerless shell that his home had now become, Arno decided to go. It was rather expensive (he noted from the travel agent’s window that he could have had a week in Spain for the same amount), but he felt it might well be worth it for the chance of getting to know new people.

As things turned out the ‘high-grade channeller’ (a Hopi Indian) promised on the card came down with a low-grade bout of flu but ‘Man - the Cosmic Onion!’ proved a not uninteresting alternative theme to occupy the serious inquirer’s mind.

The opening address was given by Ian Craigie, Founder Emeritus of the community. Arno was impressed and mildly entertained at the idea of himself as multi-layered with the ‘god self’ at the very heart of things. He enjoyed the company of the other guests and was intrigued by the variety of remedial courses: Colour Therapy, Harmonic Tuning, Tear Up Your Negative Script, The Care and Cleansing of Your Astral Body. An initial consultation was included in the cost of the weekend and he had almost decided on a harmonic tune when the door of what he now knew to be the Solar opened and, with a thrilling rustle of iridescent taffeta, Miss May Cuttle swept in.

He would never forget that first sight of her. So tall, with gleaming auburn hair flowing down her back. Her features were assembled with a rare degree of spatial symmetry. The end of her large gently hooked nose was displayed cleanly against a powdered expanse of olive skin adorned by a very fine silky moustache. Her cheek bones were flat and broad and her eyes, which had translucent glowing pupils like circles of amber, had a Magyaresque tilt.

After supper she played her cello. Entranced by the nimble fluidity of her bow and the floridly emotional music soaring to the high beams, Arno knew not only that he loved her but also that in some mysterious, impossible way he always had. He discovered her subject (Colour Healing), put himself down for a workshop and revelled in the warmth of her enthusiastically humane and generous nature. She sorted out his aura, wardrobe, sleeping habits, diet and attitude to the cosmos in a twinkling. Arno attended three more retreats then sold his house and moved to the Manor for good.

All this had been eighteen months ago and the happiness he had felt on first arriving had proved accumulative. Gradually he had shed his loneliness like an old skin, carrying it half-heartedly for a while - a rough barbed little parcel - and then one day just putting it down for good.

Of the members present when he had entered the commune, only May and the Master remained. The others, as is the way of communicants, had joined other groups or reverted to the nuclear. But replacements had arrived and now The Lodge was thriving. Indeed so satisfactory was the balance sheet that it was able to offer bursary help to the impecunious. Most months there was even a small surplus to send to Eritrea or wherever was the greatest need.

Arno gave an irritated ‘uurgh’ and pinched his arm hard. He had done it again. He had drifted off. He wondered not for the first time if he had made a mistake in choosing Zen as his discipline. He had been so attracted by its concrete day-to-day practicality - so resolutely non airy-fairy - but it was jolly difficult. Even without the koän. Clenching his teeth, applying himself determinedly to the task in hand, he tried the Master’s suggestion of verbalising the moment positively and loudly.

‘How wonderful, how miraculous!’ he cried, rootling away with the metal blade. ‘I am hoeing the radishes and now the broad beans. What joy!’

But it was useless. In no time at all he was picturing May and longing to be in her presence. Serving, adoring. Turning the pages of her music, making lemon tea on her little spirit stove. Or just blissfully basking in the charm of her company under the shining bright protection of her radiant eye.

Every day around mid-morning Ken, in his rôle as Zadkiel, planetary light worker, got down to some serious channelling. Sitting upright in the way of the Lotus, nostrils fluting with extrasensory verve, eyes humbly crossed, he and his supra-conscious mind would attempt to penetrate the Outer Screen of Life and plug into the Inner Matrix of Reality. To assist him in these endeavours Zadkiel wore his nuclear receptor. This was a small gold-plated medallion covered in tiny pyramids which trapped all toxic energies (from microwaves, acid rain, carcinogenic radiation, Janet’s negativity etc.) then manipulated the body’s DNA vibrations until all toxicity was defused and harmonised.

Heather (or Tethys as she was astrally known) sat beside her husband breathing noisily and nasally, off about her own cosmic business which might run from a basic recharging of her energies through the great Devas of the Crystal Grid to a full-blown trip to Venus renewing friendships with other ascendant souls who, like herself, had escaped the drowning of Atlantis.

Sometimes Hilarion, Ken’s contact on the other side, would come straight through (a single abracadabra), other times he would go in for quite lengthy teasing, wispily hovering about and hinting portentously in capital letters of revelations to come. Today he spoke almost before Ken had taken one pure breath from the Ascended Master Realms.

‘I am here Earthling. Do you accept the Concentrated Flame of the Presence of the Sacred Fire?’

‘Greetings beloved Hilarion. I accept the Authority of the Flame and promise to perfect, protect and beautify the Cosmic Cause and work only to establish the Spirit of Love in all Mankind.’

‘It is well. Know that they in the High Realm, the Shining and Invincible Ones, desirous of assisting in the precipitation of God’s Perfection in the World of Form, Bless thy Sincere Endeavours.’

‘Please convey my heartfelt gratitude to these all-powerful supreme authorities, great Hilarion.’

There was quite a bit more of this, plus instructions on how to keep ‘the spiralling energy-vortice of our sweet planet earth’ consciously tuned and magnetically cleansed. Hilarion’s voice was very like Ken’s and he was inclined to giggle. When these puckered-up sniggers had first escaped from between Ken’s lips, he had been very surprised - not expecting one of the Lords of Karma to have anything as earthy as a sense of humour. The content of these sessions varied and truth to tell this a.m. it was all rather dull. Mainly about How To Throw Off Discordant Accumulations into the Interplanetary Matrix of Violet Light.

What Ken really enjoyed were the rare occasions when the old wizard offered a really unusual suggestion for some imaginative sortie which would somehow lead Zadkiel and Tethys towards a new appreciation of the glorious Cosmic Heartbeat. For instance only last week he had vouchsafed that if they chose, in the right and proper frame of mind, to trace each abandoned railway line in England to its source, they would obtain proof positive that Jesus - the Cosmic Christ - had visited their country in the latter half of the twelfth century.

‘I have a prophecy, Zadkiel.’ Ken sat up and Heather, who was by now on her way back, sat up too. ‘By happenstance this night at the rise of the crescent moon the goddess Astarte will take upon herself a fleshly vestment to move amongst all denizens of the lower planes and disseminate lunar wisdom.’

‘Gosh,’ said Heather cogently.

‘I suggest you bethink a circle of light around your whole being in readiness. Also call upon the countless legion of Violet Elohim for support. Visualise yourself within the electronic pattern. Keep the rhythm of invocation going at all times. And don’t offer her any refreshments.’

‘Of course not, great Hilarion.’ As if they would be so crass. ‘Have you any idea of the exact -’

But he was off. Back over the aeons to the galaxy of his choice. At one once more with the burning stars and solar fire of divine alchemy. Briefly the words ‘I AM’ burned in the heavens then they too were gone and Ken gave a great sigh as he sloughed off his ethereal persona and returned to the thorny old work-a-day world. He looked across at Heather.

‘How was it for you?’

‘Ohh ... Unity of Life as Light in the Sisterhood of Angels. A new core Avataric message - God Ego equals Vestal Virgin. A bit samey to tell you the truth. But Hilarion ...’ Heather tried not to sound miffed. ‘Giving you a prediction ...’ Ken blushed, shrugged and regarded the sole of his upturned left foot. ‘Do you think we should tell the others?’

‘Certainly,’ replied Ken. ‘It would be unfair not to. Imagine their surprise otherwise. And we have to consider the Master. He is old and frail. An unadvised shock of this magnitude might well be too much for him.’

Suhami was milking Calypso, resting her cheek against the goat’s cream and chocolate flanks, gently squeezing dark wrinkled teats. The milk spurted into a plastic bucket.

When not tethered about the place Calypso lived in an outhouse. This was clean and whitewashed with a two-part stable door. There were rows of apples on slatted shelves. Though scabby, the fruit smelt very wholesome as did Calypso’s straw which was changed every day.

Suhami loved this place. The quietness. The golden warmth of the morning sun as it bounced off snowy walls. It reminded her of the Solar where they gathered for meditation - having the same charged, beneficent brightness. Even while noting the comparison she smiled. Nothing very spiritual about an old byre full of goat. But the Master had said that God could be present anywhere if the heart was open and humble, so why not here?

‘Why not Cally - hmn?’ Suhami shook off the last drips of milk and stroked the goat’s warm mottled udder. Calypso turned her head, lifted a rubbery lip and gazed at her milkmaid intently. The pupils of the goat’s eyes were yellow horizontal slits and she had a slight beard, girlish and feathery. Her expression never changed. She always looked ruminative and self-satisfied, as if guarding an important secret. A back hoof shifted slightly and Suhami moved the bucket out of harm’s way. Calypso’s bell gave a petulant honk. There was nothing she liked more than kicking the milk over.

In a moment Christopher would be here to take her out to graze. The habit was to move her round and about the vast lawn where she would nibble away producing a nap like velvet. This idea of establishing goat browsage rights had been voted for almost unanimously after a petrol mower was judged to be environmentally unsound. Only Ken, who was allergic to the milk, abstained.

Suhami slipped Calypso’s leather collar on, gave her an apple and put a second in the lovely tapestry bag resting against the milking stool. The bag was a birthday present from May. The embroidery of glowing sunflowers and deep purple irises against a background of earth and red-brown leaves was almost identical to the design on May’s own bag which Suhami had long admired. Only the sunflowers were different. A shade paler, for the shop in Causton had run out of marigold wool and could only offer the slightly less rich amber. Suhami had been very touched, picturing May secretly sewing in her room, motivated solely by the wish for someone else’s happiness, hiding the work if Suhami came by. Suhami had received so much kindness since moving to the Manor House, in addition to the supreme kindness of the Master’s teaching. So many offerings of quiet concern, conversations where someone really listened, gestures of comfort, tasks shared. Now they knew who she really was all this would change. Oh - they would try to carry on as usual. To treat her just the same but it would be impossible. Eventually money would drive a wedge. It always did.

Suhami’s lips twisted ironically as she remembered how excited and hopeful she had been at the idea of choosing a new name and leaving her old self behind in London. A naïve and childish way of going on, for how could one shed twenty miserable years or become another person by such an ingenuous device? Yet it had helped. As ‘Sheila Gray’ she had presented a new face for new friends to write their affections on. Then her growing interest in and determined practice of Vedanta, coupled with a deepening commitment to further change, had suggested her present title. Now her days were filled with quiet gratitude which she took for happiness, for it was as near as she had ever been.

And then Christopher joined the commune. They had slipped almost immediately into an easy jokey friendship. He would tease her - not unkindly (he was never unkind) - crossing his hands over his heart in a mock languish of love, swearing he would waste away if she would not have him. This was in front of the others. When they were alone he was quite different. He would talk then about his past, his hopes for the future, of how he wanted to get out from behind the camera and write and direct. Occasionally he kissed her, grave sweet kisses quite unlike the heartless mouth-mashings she had previously endured.

When she thought of Christopher’s inevitable departure Suhami had to remember very hard the Master’s maxim that all she needed to sustain her was not out there in the ether, or residing in another person’s psyche, but right in her own heart. This struck her as a tough and lonely dictum and she’d been alone enough already. As she pondered, footsteps disturbed the gravel outside and Suhami’s fingers trembled against the wooden stool.

Christopher leaned over the stable door and said, ‘How’s my girl?’

‘She’s been eating apples again.’

As always Suhami was both exhilarated and perturbed by the sight of him. By the soft black hair and pale skin and glowing, slightly tilted grey-green eyes. She waited to hear him say, ‘And how’s my other girl?’ for this was a well worn bit of cross-talk. But he simply pushed open the stable door and crossed over to Calypso, taking hold of her collar saying, ‘C’mon old fat and hairy.’ He had hardly smiled and in a moment they would both be gone.

Suhami said: ‘Aren’t you going to wish me happy birthday?’

‘I’m sorry. Of course I am, love.’ He wound the chain about his wrist. ‘Happy birthday.’

‘And you haven’t declared your undying passion for nearly a week. It’s not good enough.’

Struggling to keep her voice light, to make a joke of it, Suhami heard the echo of a hundred similar questions in a hundred other scenes. Won’t you come in for a minute? Shall I see you again? Would you like to stay the night? Will you give me a call? Must you go already? Do you love me ... do you love me ... do you love me? And she thought: Oh God - I haven’t changed at all. And I must. I must. I can’t go on like this.

‘I know you only do it in fun ...’ She heard the pleading note and loathed the sound.

‘It was never in fun.’ His voice was harsh as he tugged at Calypso’s chain. ‘I said come on ...’

‘Not ...’ Suhami stood up, dizzy and weightless. She stared at him in disbelief. ‘Not in fun? What then?’

‘Does it matter.’

‘Christopher.’ She ran towards him shaking with emotion, putting herself directly in his path. ‘What do you mean? You must tell me what you mean.’

‘There’s no point.’

‘The things you said ...’ Almost exalted, she took hold of his chin and wrenched his face around, forcing him to meet her gaze. ‘They were true?’

‘You should have told me who you were.’

‘But this is who I am.’ She held out begging arms. ‘The same person I was yesterday ...’

‘You don’t understand. I fell in love with someone and now I find she’s someone else. I’m not blaming you Suze - Sylvie -’

‘Don’t call me that!’

‘But I feel completely thrown. You know my situation. I’ve nothing. Well, nothing compared to the Gamelins -’

‘Oh God ...’ Suhami cried out, jerking back her head as if from a blow. ‘Am I going to have this all my life? Gamelin Gamelin Gamelin ... I hate the word. I’d carve it out of myself with a knife if I could - I’d burn it out. Do you know what it means to me? Coldness, rejection, lack of love. You’ve never met my parents but I tell you they are hateful. All they care about is money. Making it, spending it. They eat and breathe and dream and live money. Their house is disgusting. My father is a monstrous man, my mother an overdressed dummy kept going by pills and drink. Yes! my name is Sylvia Gamelin and it’ll be the bloody death of me ...’ And she burst into a torrent of abandoned weeping.

Christopher seemed for a moment unable to speak. Then he stepped forward and folded her into his arms. After a long while he dried her tears, saying: ‘You must never, ever cry like that again.’

Chapter 2

Guy and Felicity Gamelin were in the doorway of their much-photographed town house near Eaton Square. The door, blinding pillar-box red, stood open beneath the Georgian fanlight. Smart bay lollipops grew in tubs on the black and white tiled step.

Guy and Felicity were saying goodbye. That is to say, Felicity was murmuring vexedly at the sight of her reflection in the writhing tangle of Mexican glass that was the hall mirror, whilst Guy fluently cursed Furneaux - at that moment stuck in a traffic jam in Chester Row. Neither addressed the other. Anything of import had long since been said. Or shouted, or shrieked and screamed. Now Felicity was careful, Guy indifferent. He had wondered once, on one of the rare occasions when he paid her any mind, why she bothered to go through this air-kissing, hand-waving ritual every morning, never thinking that his departure might be the one certain moment of satisfaction in a treacherous and hazard-ridden day.

Felicity shook out her silvery-tipped apricot mane and briefly imagined it netted in a Botticelli chignon of gold thread and pearls. Guy’s invective rose to fever pitch. He had a mind like a well-stocked cess pit and never minced his words, which were full of spite and filthily inventive. The car finally arrived and Furneaux, grey-capped and suited, stone deaf from choice, parked and got out to open the nearside door. Immediately a queue of hooting vehicles formed. Guy gave a ‘yah boo’ smirk and leaned on the Roller’s thickly padded door. It did not occur to him, thriving as he did in the narrow blank-eyed fastnesses of the city where respect was index-linked, that the queue might be under-impressed by the magnificence of his equipage. This tiny victory, the first of the day (for he had long since ceased to regard his wife as a foe of any merit), cheered Guy up considerably as he settled back into the ivory leather and lit the first of his forbidden Dom Perignons.

Left alone Felicity drifted into the drawing room. This time, these first few moments after her husband left, would decide the shape and flavour of the hours to come. And - she recalled his overnight case - the evening, too. She prayed for a good day. Not happiness, never that. Just a bland unfolding of ordered assignations hedged about with the usual conventions. Where ‘How are we Mrs Gamelin?’ and ‘Lovely to see you again’ were never spoken from the heart and so, thankfully, demanded no sincere response. She had all sorts of little dodges, fail-safe mechanisms to set her on the right path. Or at least keep her off the wrong one.

Charity lunches, private views, dress shows, tastings of exotic foods and fine wines. The invitations were always there. Come as you are and don’t forget your cheque book. Today was an auction of Russian icons and a yearling sale at Newmarket. Otherwise she might ring a gossipy acquaintance and ask questions about people in whom she had not the slightest interest. She would force brightness into her voice, and darkness out, like some effervescent actress/housewife in a washing commercial.

Her movements were becoming vague; a dangerous sign. Keeping busy, they had said at the clinic, was most important. By this she assumed they meant physically busy for her mind was never still. When she had first come home many people offered advice that frequently concluded with the words ‘Whatever happens you don’t want to go in there again.’ Felicity felt it impolite to disagree and could imagine the amazement had she told them the truth, which was that she had been as near to contentment in the hermetically sealed warmth and comfort to Sedgewick Place as she had been in her entire adult life.

Drugged at first, then gradually weaned into a more subtle dependence, each day had been one long highlight. Flowers would arrive followed by exquisitely arranged trays of delicious food. Smiling people bathed her, then combed her hair with slow languorous strokes. Doctors heard out her sorrows, and the cruelties of the outer world beat on the clinic walls in vain. Nothing was real. She felt like an imprisoned princess in a high and mysterious tower. The phenomenal cost had not even grazed the surface of her fortune.

They called it a nervous breakdown. A neat phrase explaining many antisocial actions - from bursting into tears at Harrods to clawing one’s face in a convulsion of self-loathing. She had done both and in the same day, too. A terrifying escalation of abandonment and despair. But that was all in the past. All in the past, Felicity.

She said her name aloud a lot. It helped to counteract the frequent sensation that she was constituted so vaguely as hardly to make a complete person at all. Artificially brisk, she strode down to the basement, her heavy cream satin robe slapping at her calves.

In the huge Italian-designed hi-tech kitchen, the smell of chocolate brioche hung melting on the air. Verboten if she was to stay size ten. Guy had eaten four. Weight looked good on a man.

He’d been lean and hungry when they’d first met; slinking round, low-bellied like a starving cur. All she’d had to do was crouch down, extend the palm of her soft white idle hand, show him the words ‘McFadden and Latymer’ and smile. In those days there’d been a quick lightness in the turn of his head and a neck-or-nothing set to his wide, slightly turned down lips. He’d reminded her of a handsome frog. A young Edward G. Robinson.

Felicity grabbed a still warm pastry and rammed it into her mouth, knuckling in the overhanging fragments, hurting her lips. She chewed and chewed and sucked and chewed, voraciously extracting all the buttery, chocolatey vanillary essence, then spat the pulp into the disposal unit and ground it away. Then she lit a cigarette and stared up through the basement bars at the sad pollarded plane trees. She pictured them growing straight and tall, tender leaves uncurling high above London’s muck and murk. All these poor things had were a few twigs sprouting from scaled over wounds. Someone walked by glancing down. Felicity dodged away and hurried upstairs.

Her bedroom was on the third level. She locked her door and sank, panting, on Guy’s bed as if she had been pursued. They still shared a room, whether out of cussedness or malevolence on his part she could never quite fathom. It was not a comfortable experience. Guy was restless, his face on the pillow usually expressing some extreme emotion. Sometimes he laughed in his sleep and Felicity was sure he was laughing at her. On his bedside table was a photograph of their daughter in a mother-of-pearl frame. Felicity never looked at it. She knew it by heart. Or would have done if she had a heart to know it by. This melodramatic reflection made her eyes sting with self-pity and she screwed them up tight.

Foolishly she picked up the frame and slid further into ruinous introspection. As she stared into the wide hazel eyes the face seemed to dissolve, regressing in a flowing series of images into babyhood. Sylvie’s first clumsy efforts at ballet class, her bewildered tears at being sent away to school and terrible anguish when Kezzie, her adored pony, died. Felicity slammed the photograph down, splintering the glass and thought, Christ I need a drink.

A drink and a couple of Feelgoods. The brown bombers. They should do the trick. Strictly for emergencies the clinic had said, but if being alone and in despair at nine on a terrible bright sunridden morning in deepest Belgravia wasn’t an emergency what the fuck was? And a bath. That should help jolly things along. Felicity wrenched at the delicate golden taps and scented water gushed out.

She drew on her cigarette and saw her mirrored cheeks cave into corpse-like hollows. A web of fine lines spun out from the corner of her eyes. So much for the embryonic serum for which so many unborn lambs had given up any chance of skipping about the greensward. She stubbed out her cigarette in the honey-coloured gel. A hundred and fifty, and for what? A web of fine lines. She traced the network with the tips of her index fingers then suddenly thrust the nails hard into the delicate skin, leaving cruel half moons. Then she picked up the tranquillisers and returned to the bedroom.

Taking out a half bottle of champagne from the tortoiseshell and ebony armoire which Guy had had converted to an ice-cool receptacle for his bed-time tipple, she put the tranquillisers on her tongue and tipped back the sparkle, letting it run all over her face and throat. In the bathroom the perfumed water overflowed, soaking the carpet, oozing outwards to the door.

Felicity, having drunk two more bottles, curled up, shrinking and dry-mouthed on a low brocaded chair. She was trying to avoid touching the fabric which had taken on the aspect of a mysterious landscape: spiked trellises; dissolving lovers’ knots running into crimson lakes; clouds like blue-bunched fists. It was all sinisterly vivacious and filled her with foreboding.

The encroaching tide, the slap-slap at the edge of the bath, finally attracted her attention. She tried to stand up. Her limbs were heavy and her head ached. She blinked at the water which seemed to be vigorously on the move. Feeling bereft and frightened she started to cry.

Outside in the street a pneumatic drill started up. Drrrrrrrrr r. r. r. ... Felicity rammed her fingers in her ears but the sound continued, splitting open her skull. Drrrrrrrr ...

She lurched over to the window, flung it up and screamed, her voice cracking like a wet sheet in the wind, ‘Shut up you bastards ... Shut up!’

The drill stopped independently of her intervention. She was about to withdraw when a voice directly beneath her said: ‘Mrs Gamelin?’

Felicity craned out further. Standing on the black and white steps, looking up at the house with an expression of covetous respect, was a perfectly strange young man. She ran down and opened the poppy-red door. The young man jumped back no doubt recalling the manic shrieks from the upstairs window. Behind him, parked at the curb, was a van inscribed ‘Au Printemps: Luxury Dry Cleaning & Invisible Repairs.’ He produced a piece of paper.

‘From the desk of Mr Gamelin, Mrs Gamelin.’

Felicity gave a hawk of laughter at such pomposity but she took the paper, which listed various items of clothing and read them out. ‘One navy pinstripe suit, one grey chalk-stripe, one cream linen dinner-jacket. To be collected.’ And a signature: ‘Gina Lombardi’.

‘Wait.’ She left him on the step knowing he’d be in the hall the moment she was out of sight, and climbed back upstairs. In Guy’s dressing room she pulled out the clothes noticing, as no doubt she was meant to do, the lipstick on the tuxedo lapel. An unnecessary directive. As far as Felicity was concerned Gina could have him not only mounted but stuffed.

She walked to the landing and looked down. The front man for Au Printemps was examining his zitzy complexion in the Mexican sunburst. Felicity shouted ‘Catch’ and threw down the clothes, watching their ballooning descent.

The young man flushed. He moved quietly into the hall where he knelt and folded each item with ostentatious neatness. Felicity was sorry for her rudeness. She had been brought up always to be polite to inferiors which, her parents had led her to understand, included everyone but the Queen, the heir apparent and, on Sundays, Almighty God.

He did not reply. He was checking the pockets, pulling the linings out, tucking them back. He was not really put out by her behaviour. Everyone knew that the rich, like the very old, did and said just what they damn well liked. And for the same reason. Nothing to lose. This one was well away. He could always smell champagne. It would be something to tell Hazel when he got back. They always said in the office he was a proper little Nigel Dempster. Whilst half hoping for a further tasty burst of obscenity to round the story off, his hand came into contact with a pale green envelope. He took it out and placed it carefully on the hall table. She made a sound of inquiry.

‘We’re trained to check all the pockets, madame.’

‘I say,’ said Felicity, hanging over the banisters. ‘Is it a long course?’

When he had gone, slamming the door behind him, she went back down and picked up the envelope. It was not like Guy to be careless. He had a shredder in his study at home as well as in the office. True he had been very distracted the last couple of days, but even so ...

The envelope was recycled. She turned it over. It was addressed to them both. Strangely this perfidious concealment evoked a response far stronger than any sexual or social infidelity might have done. Her fingers trembled as she drew out the paper. What a bloody cheek! Her letter, her letter. She read the note several times, at first shaking with anger, not really taking it in. When she had fully absorbed the information she sat for a long time as if in a trance. Then she went into the sitting room, picked up the telephone and started punching.

‘Danton? You must come over - right away ... No - Now! This minute. Something incredible has happened.’

The loudest sound in the Corniche convertible now inching its way round Ludgate Circus was the bump lurch stagger bump of Guy Gamelin’s heart.

The calming technique of deep breathing suggested by his man in Harley Street had been impatiently and sketchily resorted to as had the muscle-relaxant drill. Neither had much effect. Guy performed both routines with a deep grudging resentment and then only because he could not bear the thought of paying for advice and not taking it. The fact was he refused to admit that such protective exercises were at all necessary. He was as vigorous now as he had ever been. At forty-five, still shaking hands with youth.

There was a flutter in his chest. An extremely delicate oscillation like a vibrating feather. Guy rested his fingers against his inside breast pocket feeling the outline of a brown glass bottle without which he had been told never to travel; not even from the bedroom to the loo. He swung out the walnut drinks cabinet, poured a dangerously generous ice-cold Tom Collins and placed a tablet on his tongue. Soon the fluttering ceased and although Guy didn’t relax - he never relaxed - he sat a little more easily on the puffy upholstery. Then he disconnected the phone and let his mind go. Immediately it started to write anticipatory scenarios for the evening’s confrontation, now only hours away.

Normally when riding out to face an adversary, Guy’s blood would be fizzing with exhilaration. For, more than anything else, he loved a fight. Embattlement was his normal state of mind. He woke each morning from dreams of bloody conquest ready to charge through city boardrooms leaving a trail of wounded enterprises in his wake. Caparisoned by Savile Row, laved and barbered by Trumpers, he saw himself as a twentieth-century merchant prince. In truth he was a robber baron although his lawyers would have crucified the first man bold enough to say so.

Guy could not bear to lose. He had to be the best at buying and selling; the best at laying waste. His horses must run faster, his yacht be the most splendid. The racing cars he sponsored only came second under his patronage once. ‘Show me a good loser,’ he would bawl into the driver’s sweating, oil-streaked face, ‘and I’ll show you a loser.’

But although he bought and sold men like so many peanuts and bent whole companies and countless women to his will, there was one area in which, up until now, he had not yet succeeded. Even in this instance, though, the word ‘failed’ was never uttered. The love of Guy’s life, and his greatest torment, was his daughter Sylvie.

Naturally when Felicity first became pregnant Guy had wanted a boy. He was so used, even in those early days, to getting his own way, that the birth of a girl had devastated him. The measure of his disappointment at this insult to his manhood alarmed his wife, her parents, the hospital staff and anyone else who came within singeing distance. For all he knew, (too late, too late), it had even alarmed the baby.

Guy simmered down over the first few weeks but resignation was not in his nature. He despatched someone to glean the latest information on genetic research from scientific and medical journals and bought the best advice available. It seemed from what he had read that the point had been as good as reached when it was possible to choose the sex of one’s child in advance, and he did not intend to be cheated by nature a second time. But, as it turned out, all the gleaning and expenditure, and bullying confrontations with specialists, were a waste of time and money - for Felicity never conceived again.

Guy had taken his first mistress during his wife’s pregnancy and suspected that Felicity’s consequent wilful refusal to give increase was a deliberate act of revenge. Later, when this point of view became medically indefensible, he was faced with what was, for a man of his sensibilities, an appalling dilemma. Either he went through life the father of one female child or he began again with another partner, thus announcing to the world that his marriage was a failure.

To understand the absolute impossibility of such an admission would be to understand what an astonishing, breast-beating triumph his capture of Felicity had been in the first place.

Her family, of course, had seen him for what he was. They had investigated his background and been appalled. She, fresh from a Geneva finishing school, presented with a collection of suitable young and not so young men had found them all pallid in comparison to Guy - who had thrilled and alarmed her in equal measure. Aware of this, he skilfully kept the fear quotient at just the right level. High enough to keep her intrigued, low enough for her to believe that he was tameable if the right girl took him in hand. She was wrong and he destroyed her.

But their life together, if one could so call such an empty baroque extravaganza, must be seen to continue. He would not be bought off and they had all tried. No one would ever say of him he could not hold what he had won.

His daughter’s childhood held no interest. He hardly noticed her. There had been nannies (one or two deliciously satisfactory), and occasionally other children in the house. Once Guy came home and found hordes of them with balloons and carnival hats and a man in a harlequin suit riding a one-wheeled bicycle. Sylvie had thanked him gravely on that occasion for a magnificently attired four-foot-high doll that he had never seen before. But mainly she did not impinge and how could Guy, who had no imagination, perceive the passionate longing for love and praise or just simply attention that possessed his daughter’s lonely heart?

And then, just after her twelfth birthday, everything changed. He remembered the day and time almost to the minute. She had been asked to play something on the piano. Music was on the curriculum at her very expensive boarding school so music she had to learn. Sylvie had no talent for the subject but, compelled to have lessons and practise during term time, had inevitably acquired a rudimentary technique. She had chosen ‘The Robin’s Return’, an old-fashioned, tinkling rather sentimental tune. Guy had been leaning on the mantelpiece wondering if he had been right in sensing a wind of change in Blue Chip Trusts when he glanced across at the white Steinway and saw, as if for the first time, his daughter’s face.

Pale, intense, rigid with anxiety. She was frowning and her lips were bitten together in a narrow line of concentration. Thin arms arched high over the keyboard, her shining brown silky little girl’s hair was caught back from her face in a velvet-covered slide. She had been wearing a blue and white striped dress with a large white collar and bow that had fluttery, dark blue streamers. All these things appeared to Guy with such vivid and dazzling clarity that he might only that second have been awarded the gift of sight. And then, before he could become even slightly familiar with this almost hallucinogenic prospect, a second and even stranger thing occurred.

He became overwhelmed by a torrent of extraordinary emotion. Drowning in it, swept away, he gripped the mantelpiece, deeply alarmed. He thought he was ill so violently did his body react. His heart felt as if it were being squeezed, his guts looped and tangled. And more, and worse. For when this wave of feeling ebbed away it left behind a terrible residue. It left him with the gift of understanding.

He received and appreciated, compressed into the briefest space of time, all of his daughter’s despair, her aloneness, her desperate hunger for love. And then knew an immediate agony of protective tenderness towards her. The newness and strength of this pain, that any father could have told him was par for the course, pierced him like a knife. He drank in her downbent serious face and realised how rarely he had seen her smile. (How could he not have noticed that?) He felt unbearably moved at this revelation of her sadness and then consumed by a desperate need to make amends. To offer all his love.

Yes - he recognised the emotion, even though he had never received any himself, for what it was. He vowed to give her everything. Find time to do all sorts of things, to make up for the lost years. When the music faltered and, after a few more hesitant notes, stopped entirely, he applauded, striking his hands together too loudly. Felicity stared, amused and disbelieving.

‘That was very good, Sylvie. Marvellous, darling! You’re coming on really well.’ He was surprised how naturally the words sprang from his mouth. He, who never praised a living soul. He waited for her response, indulging in a little fatherly contemplation, imagining her pleasure at this enthusiasm. She closed the piano lid gently, got up from her stool and left the room. Felicity laughed.

Guy had pursued his daughter from that moment on. He took her away from boarding school so he could see her every day. Each weekend he devised outings that he thought might please and entertain. He poured presents into her lap or hid them in her room or rolled them up in the napkin by her plate, sick with apprehension lest they should not find favour. She rejected all these attempts at gaining her affection not harshly or vigorously - he could have handled that, there would have been an opening to build on - but simply turning from them with an air of quiet, well-mannered resignation. Occasionally she would look at him and her eyes were like pale blue stones.

Only once did she respond with any show of emotion and that was when, in a renewal of remorse at the years of neglect, Guy had struggled one day during an outing at the zoo to put his shame and regret into words. To unload perhaps, however unfairly, a fraction of the guilt. He had hardly started to speak when she turned on him shouting; ‘Stop it, stop it! I don’t care.’

He had desisted of course and they had spent the rest of the afternoon silent and apart although, he reflected painfully, no more apart than usual. Everywhere he looked that day there seemed to be fathers holding their children by the hand or carrying toddlers shoulder-high. One boy who looked no more than sixteen wore a canvas sling cradling a tiny baby. It was asleep, its scarlet crumpled profile resting on the boy’s hollow chest. I could have done that, thought Guy, looking down in anguish at the narrow parting of his daughter’s hair. Christ - I don’t even remember picking her up.

He never again attempted to burden Sylvie with a declaration of his feelings although he had once struggled to put them in writing. He had not given her the letter of course, just locked it away in his desk drawer with a lock of her hair, some photographs and school reports. As the months and then the years went by his bitter regret inevitably, given her continued indifference, became less sharp. He could not ease up though. Doggedly he conversed till his throat ached; asking questions, making suggestions, commenting on day-to-day affairs. Once he had got the idea that it was Felicity’s presence that was causing the child’s restraint. That if he and Sylvie lived just with each other, they would by some happy miracle of familial osmosis breathe warmth into each other’s lives and hearts. He had suggested it to Sylvie, not caring by that stage that such a move would broadcast to the world the failure of his marriage. She had appeared puzzled, frowned and pondered for a moment then said: ‘But why would I want to do that?’

Then five years ago everything changed again. On the morning of her sixteenth birthday Sylvie disappeared. Walked out of the house as if going to school, never arrived, never came home. Guy, mad with terror, was convinced she had been kidnapped. Then, when no ransom call was made, he concluded that she had been the victim of an accident or murderous attack. He had contacted the police who, once they had been given Sylvie’s age, were irritatingly un-alarmed and said she was probably staying with friends or just wanted to be on her own for a bit.

Knowing this could not possibly be the case, Guy had visited the school and asked if he could talk to anyone with whom his daughter was particularly close. He could not give a name for Sylvie had never discussed her friends nor, for many years, brought any of them home.

A tall girl with narrow, supercilious eyes had been brought to the principal’s office. She informed Guy that Sylvie had always said she couldn’t wait to be sixteen so that she could leave home. ‘She told me,’ said the girl with feigned reluctance, ‘she’d always loathed her parents.’

That night Felicity, home after her third cure and already over the yardarm, heard out her husband’s pain-filled revelation and said: ‘God, you’re so dense about everything except making money. She’s hated us for years.’

Guy had tracked Sylvie down fairly quickly. She was living in a squat at Islington. Quite decent as squats go. Water, electricity, off-cuts of carpet on the floor. He had gone round with the bloodstock papers relating to the three-year-old racehorse that was his birthday gift. She had appeared in the doorway and immediately started to shout and yell abuse at him, almost spitting in his face. After the years of bloodless unresponsive introversion it had been like receiving an electric shock. He had stepped back alarmed, amazed and - yes he had to admit it - exhilarated. Then she had flung the papers over the basement railings and slammed the door. They must have been picked up later, though, for the horse was sold the following month for two-thirds of the original price.

Oddly enough, after becoming almost resigned to what was virtually a non-relationship, this brawling encounter reawakened in Guy all his previous yearnings. He could not believe any of the half dozen sponging troglodytes smirking behind her in the open doorway gave a damn for her wellbeing.

Over the next few years she moved around a lot. Guy employed a firm of private detectives, ‘Jaspers’ in Coalheaver Street, and always knew where she was. She never lived alone, sharing sometimes a mixed flat and occasionally with just one man. These liaisons, if such they were, never lasted long. Guy wrote to Sylvie regularly, asking her to come home, always enclosing a cheque. A very large cheque at Christmas and birthdays. She never replied to the letters but the cheques were always cashed so at least he was still good for something. Once she was twenty-one and could draw on her trust fund, even that small usefulness would be denied him.

Of course she was getting her own back, he thought. She has bided her time. She has waited and waited until she could humiliate and reject me as I, for years, did her. He recognised with an almost elated surge of recognition: She is just like me. And then, with a terrible falling back, And I would never forgive.

He wondered sometimes, to comfort himself, if perhaps her mind had not devised some cold and cruel symmetry. Could she mean this punishment, this banishment to last for precisely twelve years as his had done? She’d be twenty-eight then. Married, perhaps, with children of her own. She might be living anywhere. Abroad even. Thinking this, Guy had the shameful and traitorous notion that he could have borne it better if she had died.

He took to hanging around near her current apartment, discreet and self-conscious, like a thwarted suitor. Once, getting into a cab, she had spotted him in a doorway and gestured with crude and vigorous panache like a lustful navvy. Another time - and this was much worse - he had seen her come out of the building hanging on to the arm of a bored-looking man in a tweed jacket. She had been chattering brightly, laughing up into his face, her whole posture that of someone desperate to please. Half way across the road the man shrugged her off and Guy, even whilst appreciating the irony of the reaction, could have killed him.

Then she disappeared for the last time and much more thoroughly. In receipt of this disturbing intelligence Jasper himself took on the task of trying to trace her. Posing as a debt collector he had called at her last place of residence only to be thrown down the stairs by an Amazonian domestic. A female operative was then employed, at first with equal lack of success.

During this time Guy was in a pit of despair. Until he found himself totally ignorant of his daughter’s whereabouts, he had not appreciated how crucial this knowledge was to his peace of mind. Bitterly estranged from him she might be but at least he had known she was ‘all right’ in the most basic sense of the words. After she vanished he became aware in his days and nights - and especially in his dreams - of a great yawning darkness that, in unguarded moments, threatened to engulf him.

Once when these fears seemed to be almost eating him alive he had briefly thought of talking to the Press. They would find her. ‘GAMELIN HEIRESS VANISHES!’ They had photographs a-plenty on their files, she would be hunted down and flushed out. Someone, somewhere knew where she was. But although such action could hardly damage the father-daughter relationship further, it would surely tip the balance against the chance of any future reconciliation. An eventuality in which Guy, hope triumphing wildly over experience, still unreasonably believed.

Sylvie had been gone about three weeks when the distaff side at Jasper’s picked up a crumb of information. The investigator had the bright idea of booking an appointment with Sylvie’s regular hairdresser. Seated there, her wide-eyed and gushing assumption that Felix and his rollers must be privy to half the top-society secrets in London flattered the stylist’s tongue into looseness. Once he had determined that no one sporting such a ghastly home-made jumper and suburban haircut could possibly be writing a gossip column, he gladly dropped the odd name and juicy titbit for her to take away and thrill her boring little chums with in Ruislip or wherever.

Two of the items related to Sylvia Gamelin. Apparently she was sick of Hammersmith (‘and who wouldn’t be, darling?’), and was moving somewhere quiet, clean and peaceful. Pressed as to the possible place of relocation, Felix replied, ‘She just said the country. And we all know how big that is don’t we? She may not even have meant the Home Counties.’ Snipping scissors faltered at the enormity of such a prospect.

‘She did say she’d met a marvellous man, tho’ whether the two things are connected ...’

Although these fragments of information yielded naught for his comfort Guy, starving, fell on them and instructed Jasper’s to fan out and redouble their efforts. But no further lead could be discovered and six more sterile months dragged past, affecting Guy adversely. The fierce relish he had once obtained from the grab and grind, and cut and thrust of the market place became transmuted into a numb unfocused longing to inflict pain. This in turn affected the clarity of his judgement. He bought and sold clumsily and, for the first time in twenty years, started to lose money. Then, a few days ago, the letter had arrived.

After the first violent jolt of disbelief, inevitable when something yearned for over a long period of time seemingly drops into the hand, Guy had been overwhelmed with excitement. Although the communication was not in Sylvie’s handwriting (was not, in fact, from her at all), it was about her and, even better, contained an invitation. Guy made to touch the letter which had come to hold almost talismanic powers for him. It was not where he expected it to be. He tried other pockets, slapping and pulling at his clothes in an excess of panic before remembering that since putting it away he had changed his suit. No matter. He knew the address and every line of the contents by heart.

Dear Mr & Mrs Gamelin, Your daughter has been staying with us for some time now. We will be celebrating her birthday on August the seventeenth and would be happy if you could both be present. Perhaps arriving around seven-thirty? We eat at eight. With kindest regards, Ian Craigie.

Guy had lain awake all the previous night, excited and intrigued, turning over each phrase and intimation in the brief note, extracting solace where he could. The ‘us’ consoled him greatly. For a start it didn’t sound as if Craigie was the marvellous man for whom Sylvie had left London. The word implied plurality to the extent of at least a wife, perhaps even a family. And there was something a bit formal and middle-aged about ‘your daughter’.

Naturally Guy had not mentioned the invitation to Felicity. Her dislike of Sylvie, the relief she had not troubled to conceal when the child left home, her indifference to her daughter’s welfare - she never even mentioned Sylvie’s name - made it unthinkable that she should accompany him. Guy decided to say that she was ill. That seemed simplest. And who would be any the wiser?

Danton Morel was one of the best-kept secrets in London. No one who employed him ever told a living soul, so jealously did they guard the advantages his ministrations gave. In spite of this whenever the rich and glamorous, famous and infamous were gathered together in celebration’s name, there would most likely be present, taking the collective breath away, at least one example of Danton’s sorcery.

His card described him with becoming modesty as Coiffeur et Visagiste but the dazzling transformations that his art contrived far exceeded the simple ‘making over’ techniques shown in magazines or on television. Danton magicked up not only dramatically transfigured flesh, but also an apparently dramatically transfigured personality too.

As well as these fairy-godfather abilities, Danton was blessed with the most mellifluous cream-and-brandy voice. And when not speaking, the quality of his silence was warmly, encouragingly, receptive. Consequently people felt compelled to tell him things. All sorts of things. Danton would listen, smile, nod and continue on his designing way.

He had started out twenty years ago as a mask-maker and puppeteer and would often ironically reflect that he was still in the same line of business, although his devotees would have been mortified had they known he thought so. His private life was one of extreme simplicity. He lived vicariously, nourished by information received from muddled emotional outpourings, confessions and confidences, and by the descriptions of sybaritic events so much larger than life that his heart would glow with envious excitement. Because he never gossiped everyone assumed he was discreet and in that one respect he was. But he wrote everything down and was now in the tenth year of keeping the diaries that he hoped would make him disreputably wealthy. He was helping himself to some fresh bay leaves when Felicity opened the door. She looked wild. Her hair was standing on end as if she had been tugging at it, and he could have been a stranger so blank was her stare.

Once upstairs she began pacing about, lamenting; long expensively tanned legs flicked in and out of her housecoat like deep-brown scissors. She had thrust the letter into his hand the moment he entered the house. Danton, having read it, sat down and waited.

‘The deceit of it Danton ... the deceit ... My own daughter! As if I wouldn’t want to see her ...’

Felicity gasped out the words. Her shoulders twitched and she kept brushing at her arms as if being attacked by a swarm of insects. She said again: ‘My own daughter!’ in a loud accusatory voice as if Danton were somehow at fault. She had awaited his arrival in a positive torment of emotions. Amazement at the very fact of the invitation, fury that she had not been informed and a growing queasy awareness that, having discovered the envelope, she would now be compelled to make some sort of decision regarding its contents. Coming and going in this boiling mess was a needle-sharp surprise at the letter’s compulsive power. She had been quite sure that her love for her daughter was long since dead. She had ground it into oblivion herself, devalued it over the years until now it was a tawdry thing of no account.

Sylvie had never wanted her mother. As a baby she would struggle and strain away when Felicity tried to cuddle or even hold her. Toddling, she would direct her steps towards her nanny, the au pair, or even casual visitors to the house. She would go to anyone - or so it seemed to Felicity - but the person who loved her best. Later, when it became plain that Sylvie not only didn’t love her mother, but also refused even to like her, Felicity began the slow pulverisation of her own affection. This had caused her great pain for she had already guessed at the arid landscape that her marriage would prove to be and had seen the child as an antidotal source of comfort and joy. Now, so many years later, how could she let hope in? She would not dare.

‘It’s some sort of practical joke I suppose.’

‘Why do you say that Mrs G?’

Danton was always being asked by his clients to use their Christian names and he always declined. In Felicity’s case the diminution of her surname was as far as he was prepared to go. She disliked it intensely, thinking it made her sound like a Cockney char in some rubbishy play but would not have risked offending him by saying so.

‘We haven’t seen or heard of her for five years.’

‘Didn’t you say once she comes into some money when she’s twenty-one? Perhaps he’s a solicitor and you both have to sign something.’

‘We don’t. It’s perfectly straightforward. All tied up by my parents when she was small. Anyway - we’re asked for dinner.’

‘Is it a lot? The inheritance.’

‘Five hundred.’

Danton mentally added the missing noughts and shivered with envy. Felicity stopped pacing and sank on to an over-stuffed footstool, wrapping icy satin tight around her knees. She said: ‘I shall go,’ and felt the enormity of it. As if she had leapt into an abyss.

‘Naturally,’ said Danton. ‘The point is, what will you go as?’

Felicity looked mystified, then startled. The truth was she had summoned Danton automatically, simply out of need for his assiduously attentive ear, thinking no further than that.

‘You can’t just stroll along Mrs G.’

‘Can’t I?’ The fact of having made the decision seemed to Felicity more than enough to be going on with. What she would wear, how she would look had simply not entered her mind. And yet now that the matter had been raised she could see how important it was. Already her mind, nervous and vulnerable, had cast whoever else might be present at the dinner in antagonistic rôles. And if her expectations were correct she would need to be not just simply covered, but armoured against a formidable collection of adversaries. On the other hand ...

‘Nothing extreme, Danton.’

‘Surely you can trust me on that score.’

She had offended him. Hastily Felicity apologised. Danton got up.

‘Well - better get on. Clothed and in your right mind don’t they say?’

A cruel slip, if deliberate, which of course it couldn’t have been. You didn’t charge your clients a hundred pounds an hour for your services and then insult them. Felicity followed him on to the landing and into her evening room. She would have liked another drink but was fearful of appearing sluttish. Danton never drank alcohol and nothing containing caffeine. Sometimes a little spring water might pass the lips. His teeth and the whites of his soft brown eyes dazzled by their purity.

Felicity’s wardrobe was contained within three rooms. One for night, one for day and one for other things which were not so easily categorised: cruise wear; bikinis and cover-ups; barely used sports equipment. Tennis racquets, skis, golf clubs. (She had taken up golf and got bored with it in a single morning.) The wall facing the door in each case was mirrored and metal rods had been suspended about four feet from the ceiling to hold the clothes.

Danton and Felicity wandered along these rails pushing and pulling at the padded hangers, instigating rustles of taffeta and silk, and soft, soundless collisions of velvet. Under a dozen recessed ‘daylight’ bulbs they took out and scrutinised Muir and Miyake, Lagerfeld and Bellville Sassoon, Chanel and St Laurent. Creations were unhooked, discussed, dismissed. A tangerine flamenco dress: full frilled dancing skirt, no back, hardly any front. ‘I shouldn’t. It can get nippy after eight o’clock.’ Narrow black velvet with a little train and white band around the neck. ‘You’re her mother not her father confessor.’ Beige wild-silk chemise stiff with seed pearls and golden thread. ‘Constively dull.’ Raspberry georgette and feathers. ‘Too Fred and Ginger.’

And so it went on until having covered the territory and started to double back, Felicity remembered the Karelia. She went away, returning with a bulky swathe of white cotton inside a see-through cover. ‘It was for a first night at the Garden.’ She tugged at the poppers and Danton held the bottom of the bag preparing to pull. ‘The people I go with,’ continued Felicity, ‘always have a box, but this time for some reason we were in the dress circle. There’s no way I could have got along a row of seats so it’s never been worn.’ Felicity kicked the wrapper aside. ‘It was Pavarotti.’

‘You must wear this.’

‘Oh. You don’t think it’s a bit -’

‘We’re talking celebration-dinner in a country manor. Everyone’s bound to dress up. What else is there for them to do poor beasts, down there in the sticks?’

Actually Danton thought the dress was ‘a bit’ if not quite a lot, but it was also sensationally inspirational. Just looking at it made his fingers twitch. A dream number made to float down a Busby Berkeley staircase between ranks of adoring, top-hatted males.

Layers and layers of transparent chiffon in every possible shade of grey, from the merest wisp of smoke to deepest anthracite foaming over petticoats the colour of tarnished silver. The satin bodice and tight pointed sleeves were smothered with loops of ribbon, each anchored into place by a single dark pearl.

‘Put it on.’

Without embarrassment Felicity took off her robe.

‘Do me up ... Well - what do you think?’

‘Oh my ...’ He stepped back, bursting with anticipation. ‘What time will you have to leave?’

I suppose ... end-of-day traffic, half six.’

‘Will you be having lunch?’

‘I couldn’t swallow a thing.’

‘Right. Then we’d better get started.’

Chapter 3

Shortly after lunch, Suhami and Christopher went out to move Calypso. This had to be done at fairly frequent intervals for she nibbled at speed and with ferocious heartiness.

How Calypso loved the grass! Weed killers were forbidden so it was rich in cinquefoil and burnet and succulent dandelion. She did not feel she had quite exhausted her present territory when Christopher prised up her steel peg, and he had to wind extra links of chain around his forearm to tug her elsewhere.

Calypso’s assessment of her handler’s muscularity was spot on and she was inclined to bolt if she thought it a bit on the skimpy side. Only the other day she had shot off at a fair old lick down the drive, out of the gates and into the High Street where she’d been found ten minutes later standing patiently in a queue at the fish shop.

‘You’re a very foolish girl,’ May had scolded, walking her back. ‘You don’t even like fish.’

‘Do you want to hang on or drive in?’

‘Hang on,’ said Suhami, seizing the studded collar.

‘Watch out for yew berries, then.’

Christopher hammered while Calypso butted the air and kicked up her back legs in a fit of rage. But, once tethered, she quickly simmered down and began to munch, just occasionally lifting her head to give the world one of her enigmatic stares.

Christopher said: ‘We have to do some talking Suze. Isn’t that right?’

She turned from him. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I love you.’ He stepped in front of her again, caught the shadow on her face. ‘Well ... nice to be wanted.’

‘I do want you - I do. It’s just ...’

When she didn’t continue, Christopher put his arm through hers and moved towards the giant cedar. ‘Let’s sit down and I’ll -’

‘Not there.’ Suhami held back.

‘OK.’ Looking puzzled, he turned and they began to walk towards the pond.

‘I know it’s silly ... and they’ll long ago have disappeared but Jim’s ashes were scattered there. I can’t help seeing it as some sort of grave.’

‘Arno told me about that. Must have been very upsetting.’

‘It was at the time. And yet - it’s a bit sad really - how quickly one forgets.’

‘I suppose that’s usually the case. Unless the person was very close.’

‘He was such a nice man. Quiet and devout. When he’d finished his chores he’d just go to his room and read or meditate. He didn’t really fit into our sort of commune at all. Sometimes I used to think he’d be happier in a monastery.’

‘Wasn’t he a secret drinker though? I thought someone said -’

‘Oh no. He didn’t drink at all. That’s what made it so peculiar. As a matter of fact -’

‘Hullo ... o.o.’ A call from the terrace. May was waving, already walking towards them.

She came with a comforted heart. Almost as comforted in fact as if her troubles were already over. For Kwan Yin had come up trumps after all. And the solution, once proffered, was so strikingly obvious that May could have kicked herself for being so blind. The person to talk to was, of course, Christopher. He had not joined the Windhorse till some time after Jim’s death and so could not possibly have been involved. But although May was relieved, this did not mean she was not concerned as to what his response might be. For instance he might suggest going to the police and May knew, if such were to be the case, that she would feel as guilty as if the decision had been her own.

She hoped to find him by himself but it was Suhami who waved back, calling: ‘Did you want something, May?’ May gestured vaguely in an attempt to suggest that, even had that been the case, by now she’d quite forgotten what it was. The gesture was an awkward one for May was hopeless at pretending, being by nature as guileless as a kitten.

‘It’s you I really wanted, Christopher.’

‘So now you’ve got me.’

‘Yes ... um ... well ... We’re doing the honey at the weekend and the steriliser’s on the fritz.’ May closed her eyes as she spoke and gabbled the words. The lie still sat awkwardly in her mouth like an ill-fitting tooth.

‘Working fine last time we used it.’ All three were now strolling back towards the house. ‘Mind you - that was a bit ago.’

As they entered, May was still wondering how to prise the young couple apart. Various unimaginative ploys occurred to her, but she knew she would present them with such transparent lack of conviction that they were more likely to make Suhami suspicious than get her out of the way.

‘I’ll do it after tea.’

‘Do what?’ May stared blankly at Christopher.

‘What you asked me to do all of ten seconds ago, May. Have a look at the steriliser - after tea - OK?’

‘Of course!’ cried May. ‘Tea! Suhami - I shall need to take my ginseng and I’ve left them on my bedside table. Would you be a dear girl - save my legs ...’

As Suhami sped off, May seized her companion’s arm and pulled him further into the hall until they were standing directly beneath the lantern. Then she whispered: ‘Christopher - I have to talk to you.’

Christopher looked huntedly around and whispered: ‘I zink zey know our plans.’

‘Be serious.’

Christopher laughed. ‘Sorry. If you like I’ll look at the steriliser now and we can talk in the kitchen.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with the steriliser. I couldn’t think of anything else on the spur of the moment. I had to see you alone. I’ve been so worried. There’s something going on here ... something wrong. And I’m sure it’s to do with Jim’s -’ She broke off and looked up at the gallery. It appeared to be empty. ‘What was that?’

‘I didn’t hear anything.’ He followed her gaze.

‘A click. As if a door was closing.’

‘Perhaps it was. What is all this May?’

‘Better talk outside.’

Christopher allowed himself to be dragged down a corridor towards the kitchen. ‘This is all a bit M15. You’re not recruiting by any chance?’ They had arrived at the back entrance to the house, a glassed-in door leading to the terrace. ‘I’m not swallowing any microfilm, May,’ Christopher continued. ‘Not even for you.’

They stepped outside and Christopher turned to pull the door. May was standing a couple of paces ahead of him on old uneven flagstones seamed with yellow stonecrop. Moving to join her, he became aware of a heavy rumbling noise. Thunder? A skywards glance showed no sign of darkness. Then there was a bump and a big, black rounded object appeared teetering on the guttering.

Christopher yelled and pushed. May shot forward, tripped over the hem of her robe and went hurtling into a flower border. Christopher jumped back into the opening. The object fell between them, smashing a flagstone. A web quickly ran out from the breaking point; chippings of stone flew.

So rapid had been the descent, so violent the connection that for a few seconds the two of them remained motionless with shock. Christopher gradually became aware that someone was standing behind him calling his name. It was Suhami.

‘Was that you shouting? What is it? What’s the - May ...!’

May, her scratched face further impressed by the woody stems of a lavender bush, was struggling to her feet. As Suhami hurried to help her, Christopher slipped back into the house. The stairs and gallery were still deserted. Everything was quiet.

Swiftly he ran up to the gallery and around the three sides, knocking on doors, opening them and looking in when there was no response. All the rooms were empty.

At the far end of the right-hand section, concealed behind a velvet curtain, was an archway, the stone soaring to an exaggerated point. Directly behind this arch were a dozen steps turning back on themselves in a savagely tight corkscrew and leading to the roof. There were signs of recent disturbance. The dust on the steps was scuffed and marked by flakes of old green paint from the skylight’s metal frame. Christopher remembered that Arno had been up there a couple of days before cleaning bird mess off the lantern. He crouched down on the top step which was very close to the glass, pushed the nearest half of the skylight open and fixed it into position with a rusting strut. Then he raised his head cautiously above the opening and looked around.

The place appeared deserted. Climbing out, he at once felt disoriented - the twisty steps having left him unsure which way faced where. To get his bearings he turned a slow circle. There was the vegetable garden, so the section of the roof directly over the back door must be on the far side.

As he hesitated, a cloud slid across the sun, leeching colour from the surrounding brick and slate. A breeze sprang up and Christopher shivered although he was not cold. Someone walking on my grave. He wondered how the phrase had first arisen, for the dead, snug in their wooden cocoons, were the last people to give a damn who walked, skipped or even danced a jig above their mouldering heads.

The roof seemed crowded with chimneys though in fact there were only three sooty stacks holding four pots each. Christopher found himself disturbed by their proximity. Inanimate, they yet gave an impression of convergence. Some were cowled and, as the breeze intensified, several metal hoods swung creaking in his direction. His feelings of unease deepened and he was seized by the nonsensical conviction that the hoods concealed active organisms that were observing him.

Telling himself not to be stupid, he started making his way towards the opposite edge. His passage was not quite straightforward. The roof was in three steeply sloping sections separated by narrow paths between two of which reared the great iron ribbed lantern.

The only way to progress, so narrow were the walkways, was to place one foot directly before the other on the blue-black sheets of buckled lead in a heel-toe fashion, and this is what Christopher did. Once across, he peered over, aligning himself precisely with the smashed flagstone. He could see from the dent in the guttering where the metal object had gone over. And a lightish circular unstained patch to indicate where it had for so long been standing. This was about two feet from the edge on a completely flat surface. There seemed to him no way that anything of that size and weight could have rolled off of its own volition. Indeed it would have been far from easy for a single person to drag it to the appropriate point let alone heave it over. Yet that must have been what happened.

But in that case - Christopher sprang up quickly and turned around - how had whoever it was vanished with such speed? Could anyone be so fleet of foot as to scramble across the roof, replace the skylight, negotiate the twisty steps, and run downstairs in the brief moments between the lump of iron falling and himself re-entering the hall? Frankly it seemed impossible.

The cowls creaked again and Christopher recalled his previous sensation of being overlooked. Perhaps he had hit on the explanation. If the would-be murderer (for what else could you call someone who aims a great lump of iron ore at a human skull?) had not left the roof at all but had stayed concealed, hiding ... Was maybe still hiding.

He became keenly aware of the yawning space behind his back. Nothing but air. Oxygen, nitrogen and carbonic acid gas, excessively unsupportive. Fit only, when you came to think of it, for falling through. Just when he needed them most, Christopher felt the bones in his legs leak into his bloodstream.

He moved quickly from the edge to the nearest chimney stack. It concealed no one. Nor did the second. Silently, heart bumping, he approached the last. Four lemon barley-sugar twists thick with soot. Soft-footed he began to circle the base. Half way round he had a wild desire to laugh, recognising the action from a score of spooky movies where the comic lead tiptoes round a tree followed by a man in a gorilla suit. But there was no one there. They must have climbed through the skylight, thought Christopher, while I was checking the gutter.

He was turning to go when he noticed something sticking out from the gap between the chimney pots. It looked like the end of a metal rod. He tugged at it, slowly pulling out the whole thing. It was a crowbar.

By the time Christopher had descended from the roof and made his way to May’s room, it was crowded with people. Standing in the doorway he did a quick count. A full house.

He faced a most dramatic scene. Quite painterly in a Victorian narrative sort of way. Like one of those allegorised intimations of mortality showing an aged patriarch breathing his last, surrounded by tearful family and retainers, plus a mopey-looking dog.

May reclined on a chaise longue looking, for her, quite pale. Someone had placed a fringed shawl of peacock-blue silk across her knees. Behind her the Master, white hair fairly sparkling in the sunlight, rested his hand lightly on her forehead. Suhami knelt at her side. Tim squatted on a footstool. Arno hovered, wringing his hands (really wringing them, like pieces of washing). Janet and Trixie, looking with but not quite of the group, stood a little apart.

The Beavers were at the foot of the couch. Heather had brought her guitar and was quietly activating a few rather lachrymose chords. Ken said: ‘We’ve got a lot of healing to do here,’ and touched first his magnetic crystal then the sole of May’s foot with great solemnity.

‘I’m all right,’ said May. ‘Accidents happen. Don’t fuss.’

Heather started thrumming with a little more attack and now broke into a shrill quatrain, making them all jump.

‘O!, zenith ray of cosmic power

Pour forth from thy celestial bower

Bright radiance in a golden shower

Sustaining here our star-born flower.’

Ken stroked his crystal again and looked sternly at everyone, then at the curtain pelmet as if accusing it of concealing vital information. At length he turned back to the recumbent figure and spoke. ‘You are now enfolded deep in Jupiter’s psi-probe and bathed in his miraculous healing influence.’

‘Well I know that.’ May twitched at the silk shawl. ‘We are enfolded in miraculous healing rays at all times whatever the source. Now - I need my rescue remedy and some arnica for bruising. They’re in the little shell box. Would someone please ...’

Arno moved first, saying as he handed it over, ‘Perhaps you’d like some oxymol too, May?’

‘Why not? Honey never hurts. Thank you, Arno.’

Delighted at being under instruction from the queen of his heart, Arno hurried off. He would use the most fragrant honey - wasn’t there some Mount Hymettus left? - and the freshest, lightest vinegar all in a beautiful cup. There must be a beautiful cup somewhere. Should he pick a few flowers? Surely under such circumstances the house rules could be relaxed.

About to turn into the kitchen he halted. The back door was still ajar. Arno stepped over the threshold and stood by the shattered slab and great lump of iron. He looked at the lavender, flattened and snapped off where May had fallen. Seeing how close it must have been, he experienced a terrible quiet thrill of fear. He suddenly envisaged the world without her. Sans colour and warmth, without light, meaning, music ... harmony ...

‘But it didn’t happen,’ he said firmly. May would be extremely cross if she caught him thinking along such soggily pessimistic lines, for she always saw the best in everything. The silver lining, not the cloud. The rainbow, not the rain.

When Arno returned, having found no more elegant container, he bore a hefty mug of oxymol. May was sitting up and looking once more serenely infallible. She had shaken her rescue remedy to indigo and rubbed some on her wrists - scenting the room with a woody fragrance. He stepped forward with his offering and, as the mug was transferred, May’s fingers touched his own. Arno’s freckled cheeks blushed and he hoped no one was looking.

‘I was never in any real danger,’ she was now assuring them all. ‘My guardian angel was present as he always is. Who d’you think placed Christopher so close behind?’

Christopher received several grateful smiles in silence. He was still feeling uneasy about the decision he had taken when on the roof. Once the shock of finding the crowbar had receded he was left with the problem of what to do with the thing. Should he replace it? If he did this the attacker would remain unaware that he was rumbled and, confidence unimpaired, might well soon try again. On the other hand if Christopher removed the crowbar the man would be on his guard and perhaps doubly dangerous. On balance Christopher had decided on the latter course of action. The bar was now wrapped in a blanket and hidden beneath his bed. Later, he planned to remove it to Calypso’s byre.

Conversation had moved from May’s wellbeing to the lump of iron itself and the curious fact of how it came to be up there in the first place. Heather, the only person to have familiarised herself with the chronicles of the Manor House via a booklet in the kitchen drawer, said that it was first mentioned at the time of the Civil War when it was believed to be a large fragment of a Roundhead cannon ball. Later, due no doubt to increased scientific and astronomical knowledge, a meteor fragment was diagnosed. But, whatever its origin, it had been up there withstanding all that nature could throw at it, plus man-made bombardment in World War Two, without shifting an inch. How strange then, concluded Heather, that it should fall today.

A long silence followed this remark. May, angelically protected though she might be, still looked a bit perturbed. Trixie rolled her eyes behind everyone’s back. Ken seemed rather excited by the mystery and Heather guessed he was looking forward to channelling Hilarion’s views on the matter. Tim, sensing the inexplicable, curled up a little more tightly.

The silence lengthened and then, one by one, people turned to the Master. The whole room seemed full of a grave and supplicatory expectancy. He would explain these discordant harmonics, their faces confidently declared. He would know. The Master smiled his oblique smile. He bent for a moment to stroke Tim’s golden head, for the boy had started to tremble, and then he spoke.

‘Many things agitate the vacuum energy-field. The nether stratum of dynamic force is far from stable. Subatomic particles are in constant motion. Never forget - there is no such thing as a still electron.’

So that was it. The falling object was nothing more than an emblematisation of the general liveliness of matter. People started to nod and smile, or shake their heads in acknowledgement of their own slow-wittedness. Ken struck his forehead with the heel of his hand and said what an idiot he was. No one demurred.

Shortly after this the Master said they should leave May to rest. ‘And to give thanks to her guardian angel in the proper manner.’ He moved away then and Tim followed, almost stepping on the blue robe in his anxiety not to be left behind. At the door the Master turned. ‘I’m rather concerned about your regression this evening May. These journeys can be quite demanding. Would you care to put it off till another time?’

‘Certainly not, Master,’ said May sturdily. ‘It is the time of the new moon and, we have heard from Hilarion, most propitious. How would I feel if a manifestation from Astarte arrived and I hadn’t taken advantage of all that extra-dynamic energy? And in any case,’ she sat up, drank a little oxymol and beamed at them all, ‘I am already quite myself again.’

Chapter 4

It was half past five. At dinner the Craigies would be present. Afterwards there might not be an opportunity to catch Sylvie on her own. So Guy had arrived early at Compton Dando. His slight anxiety that this might cause annoyance had been easily subsumed beneath a general surge of excited anticipation.

In fact, being driven down, he had managed to convince himself that, reading between the lines, what Sylvie’s letter was really about was a decision to forgive him. She couldn’t write herself, Guy appreciated that. She had been badly hurt and would not for a moment assume a petitioner’s vulnerability. Neither would he wish her to do so. But that the invitation had been issued, not just with her permission but at her instigation, he now had no doubt. His years of lonely sorrow were nearly at an end. Standing by the main door of the Manor House, a bouquet of sweetly scented flowers with a card reading simply ‘With love’ in his hand, happiness broke over Guy. He was bathed in it, like perspiration.

He looked around for signs of life. There was a big Gothic key in the lock and a vertical iron rod fixed to the wall, attached to a rusting bell. He put his finger through and tugged. The bell was quite loud but no one came. He waited a while, gripping the flowers awkwardly. There were two wooden seats in the porch flush to the wall, worn and smooth like those often found outside old country churches. Guy put his bouquet down on one of them and stepped back for a better view of the beautiful and imposing house.

It hadn’t occurred to Guy that she might simply not be there. Should he check into his hotel and come back? Gina had booked a room at Chartwell Grange, the only halfway decent place within miles. Guy had decided that, whatever direction the evening took, he did not wish to return home afterwards. He wanted to be by himself to absorb, digest, relieve and, surely, to celebrate. And although Felicity knew nothing of the invitation, and in any case would be zonked out of what was left of her mind by the time he got back, Guy still felt a trace of disquiet at the idea of being in her presence so soon after parting from their daughter.

Reluctant to give up, he strolled down the side of the house. What a mess the border was. Flowers that should have been upright trailing in the dust. One immensely tall many-spired blue thing had collapsed entirely and was spread all over the gravel. He came to a shaggy yew hedge running parallel to the right-angle wall. At one point the branches had been chopped away to make an opening. Guy stepped through.

He was standing on a lawn, very large and multi-starred with daisies and white clover - some of which were being eaten by a stoutish goat. In the centre was a vast cedar of Lebanon which looked as old as the house itself. At his feet was a rectangular pond full of lively darting fish. Some striped like tigers, others smaller with spiny backs and transparent snail-like horns. At the far end of the lawn were a lot of bamboo wigwams and a general air of leafiness indicating some sort of vegetable garden. And at last, a sign of human life. Someone raking or hoeing. Perhaps Ian Craigie?

Guy started off again but had not gone far when the man stopped work, threw back his head and started to declaim. It sounded like blank verse and it was very loud. He gestured, too, throwing his arms about and gazing at the sun. Guy retreated, much perturbed.

Back at the porch he decided to give the bell a final try but then, reaching upwards, changed his mind and on impulse turned the iron ring handle. The door opened and he stepped inside.

He was in a huge hall with an arched soaring roof punctuated by brilliantly painted bosses. A grand staircase with elaborately carved newel posts and banisters led to a three-sided minstrel’s gallery. The place was sparsely decorated with very plain bits of furniture. Two large wooden chests, one of which had a splintered lid, some rush-bottomed chairs, a round nondescript table which could have been from any period and a tall, free-standing cupboard. The only attractive item visible was a large stone Buddha, about five feet tall, on a plinth. Its head was covered with curls so tight and small they looked like pimples. There were a glass jar of lupins on the plinth and a little pile of fruit.

The air smelt disagreeable. Floor polish, unsavoury cooking and dampish clothes. An institution smell. He should know. He’d been in enough. All overlain by a pungent rather sickly odour which Guy feared might be incense.

The table held two wooden bowls, each supporting an exquisitely written card. These read ‘Feeling Guilty?’ and ‘Love Offering’. Inside the guilty bowl was five pence. There were also lots of pamphlets which proved to be hand-cranked, hugely exclamatory, full of unnecessary italics and oddly situated quotation marks. Guy picked up The Romance of the Enema by Kenneth Beavers: Clairaudient: Intuitive Diagnostician FORW. Behind the door through which he had just entered was a green baize noticeboard. Guy walked over to have a look, making his footsteps louder than was strictly necessary.

The material displayed was uninspiring. Rotas mainly. Cooking. Cleaning. Feeding and milking Calypso. He read quickly through the list but Sylvie’s name was not there. He didn’t know whether to feel encouraged or frustrated. There was also a large poster: ‘Mars & Venus: Longing To Help But Are We Ready? Talk: 27th Aug Causton Library. Book early and avd. disappointment.’

Was it some daft quasi-religious set-up then? The rota listed both males and females so that ruled out a nunnery. Or a monastery either, come to that. Perhaps it was some sort of retreat. The thought of Sylvie in such a place was frankly risible. And where did Craigie come into it? ‘Have dinner with us.’ Was all this lot ‘us’? Guy didn’t like that idea at all. He had no intention of sharing his reconciliation with a load of freaks. He looked around for further clues.

There were two corridors leading off the hall and a door marked ‘Office’. Guy opened it and peered inside. The room was windowless, full of stationery and files, some stacked on the floor, some on shelves. A Gestetner stood on a card table and, in a tall-backed leather chair, a further sign of life.

Long blue-jeaned legs, glorious tumbling amber hair with a fine golden fuzz clustered around the pale brow. A board creaked under Guy’s foot and the figure turned. He caught a brief glimpse of her face before she scrambled up and ran towards a dusty tapestry wall-hanging which she seized, wrapping it around herself as if she were naked.

She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Perfection. Guy gaped like a fool. It was half a minute before he recollected himself and when he did it was to realise she was terribly afraid of him. As she stood pressed against the wall, her breath was snatched and rasping like a cornered animal’s. Guy mumbled into apologetic speech.

‘I’m sorry ... I didn’t mean ... It’s all right. I’m a visitor. Here to see my daughter ...’

It made no difference. She was panting now, scented with fear. Guy backed off, attempting with smiles and shrugs to show how safe he was. Then, in her agitation the curtain slipped. He saw her face again and got a further shock. His stomach gave a queasy flip and his forehead became cold and clammy. He looked away sick with disenchantment and disgust, for the girl was crazed.

Deep-blue eyes rolling wildly round in her head, lovely lips dribbling with slime, grimaced and pushed forward into a grisly tight circle. Then, for the first time, Guy noticed the size of the jawline and the large brown hand ferociously splayed against the wall and realised that the figure was not female at all but that of a young man. His disgust deepened and he almost ran from the room, slamming the door behind him.

What the hell sort of place was this? Guy had been willing to give the first chap talking to the empty air in the cabbage patch the benefit of the doubt, but there was no mistake about the demented second. He felt a deep sense of alarm at the thought of his daughter living here.

He returned to the central area of the hall where it seemed that, at last, his appearance had been noticed. Following the rattle of wooden curtain rings a girl had appeared in the gallery and was hurrying towards the staircase.

She had long dark hair in a plait and wore floaty muslin trousers which billowed as she moved like wide white mothy wings. The muslin was caught into anklets from which hung tiny bells tinkling in a delicate manner. She sped along on bare feet which seemed hardly to touch the ground, and descended the stairs like a piece of thistledown. As she came closer he could see that her plait was threaded through with small white flowers and that a red spot marked the precise centre of her forehead. Standing before him, she placed her hands together in a prayerful salute to greet him: ‘Welcome to the Golden Windhorse,’ and bowed.

Guy, absorbed his third shock in almost as many minutes yet recognised the moment for what it was. Fraught with danger, rich with opportunity. He looked down at her hair parting - which was also powdered with reddish dust - reached out and touched her shoulder very gently. Then he said, ‘Hullo Sylvie.’

‘My name is Suhami now.’ Even her voice was different. Gentle, colourless and curiously muffled as if strained through layers of cotton wool. ‘It means little dancing wind.’

Guy considered several rejoinders all of which seemed primed with the potential for misunderstanding so he kept silent. Just nodded and hitched the flesh in the lower half of his face up into a smile. Was this too bold a response? The bland downcast-browness gave nothing away. She said, ‘You are early.’

‘Yes. I hoped we might be able to talk before dinner.’

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’ She appeared disturbed at the very thought. A frown pleated the red spot.

Guy stood, ill at ease and uncertain, staring helplessly. Only Sylvie could reduce him to such a state and, for the first time ever, he felt a flash of resentment that this should be so.

She was going away without another word. Fluttering off across the hall, disappearing down a corridor. Surely she must mean him to follow. Guy lumbered off in pursuit feeling, in contrast to all that floss and cobweb, quite exceptionally gross. The corridor ended in a glass-topped door opening on to a terrace. Just before this on the left was a row of wooden hooks supporting an old mac and a peg bag. Beneath were assorted wellies and a paraffin stove. Facing this wall three shallow stone steps descended, ending in a further door from behind which came the sounds of crockery and the chink of teaspoons.

Turning the handle, Guy entered a kitchen, square with a low ceiling. The tiles and sink were cracked and old-looking, and there was a long iron range as well as a more modern gas cooker. Sylvie was making tea. She took some sprigs of mint from a flat raffia dish, put them in a small teapot and poured on boiling water. Guy hoped this was not for him and then hoped that it was.

She crossed to a rack of assorted knives, took one down and started chopping at a large piece of shiny, tacky-looking hard stuff. Her father, who had recently seen a drugs documentary, thought it looked like cannabis resin.

‘What’s that?’

‘Rambutan crunch.’

‘Ah.’

Now she was laying a tray. Obviously the tea was not for either of them. Any minute now she was going to pick up the lot and vanish, perhaps for good. Guy studied the composed profile, searching for some reaction to their meeting. How was it possible for her to remain so calm? Did she really not understand the significance of the moment? Whatever he had expected it was not this. She was like a stranger. His daughter yet not his daughter.

Maybe she’d been brainwashed. Perhaps this was the headquarters of some weird cult - that would explain the wafty costume, the silly bells and that ridiculous red daub. Guy, having no historical point of reference for the transformation, resented it on principle as he did any change in the quotidian made without consulting him.

He noticed she was handling all the implements on the tray in an exceptionally mannered fashion. Over-precise and unnaturally concentrated, inclining her head in a solemn deferential manner between each movement. Like all rituals its effect was to exclude the mere looker-on. All this serenity was getting on Guy’s nerves. He longed to jolt her into a natural response even whilst appreciating that any such move might be extremely unwise. He didn’t think that she might simply dread his company.

‘A beautiful house Syl ... er ... Suzz ... um ...’

‘Yes. I’m very happy here.’

‘I’m glad - oh! I’m glad you’re happy, Sylvie.’ He saw her shrink from this intrusive exuberance. Moderating his voice he added: ‘Why is that? What is it about the place?’

‘I’ve found peace here.’ A graceful hand movement encompassed the old grate, cupboards and shelves. ‘And people who really care for me.’

Guy took the blow, barely winded.

He could see she was sincere, he could tell that. Or thought so which was really the same thing. That, no doubt, was what the face denuded of all emotion, swoony drifting movements and humble bow were all in aid of. Guy loathed humility. In Guy’s opinion you could stick humility right up your fart-hole. She was speaking again in that sexless, ripple-of-silk voice. ‘... so when the Master suggested that you should be invited down we all discussed it and thought my birthday might be the right occasion.’

The second blow so lightly delivered marked Guy much more deeply than the first. To be frank, it had him on the ropes. It was not her idea then that he should visit. The suggestion had come from some bunch of sharing, caring peace-dispensing Venus-watching nutters. He was here under their sufferance. Guy felt sick with wounded pride at the thought. And jealousy. Unthinkably, he wanted to be unkind. To hurt her for bringing him to such a pass.

‘I expect it will wear off.’

‘What?’

‘All this peace and stuff.’

‘No it won’t.’

‘You’re very young, Sylvie.’

‘I’m older than I look.’

The words were full of bitterness. He looked across at her and the gap closed. Honesty flowered and the room was suddenly full of wretched agitation. Opportunities lost, gestures never made, songs never sung. Guy moved towards her and she sprang away.

‘I’m so sorry, Sylvie. Please ... believe me ... I’m so sorry.’

‘Oh, why did you come here!’ Her dignified composure vanished. Eyes glittered with sudden tears.

‘I got a letter -’

‘I mean why did you come now? Why couldn’t you just turn up at half past seven as you were asked?’

‘I told you. I wanted -’

‘You wanted, you wanted. Can’t you just once in your life simply do what someone else wants. Is that so impossible? ’ She broke off and turned away, her hands covering her face.

There was a long silence. Guy, deeply distressed by this rapid and alarming descent into animosity, bowed his head. He recognised that it was all his fault. What matter that this opportunity to meet with his daughter had been set up by strangers? He had been given the chance - that was what counted. And, finding himself in a strange milieu, had assumed hostility and snatched the operational reins into his own hands. He thought, I’ve ruined everything, and immediately quenched the idea. One false step didn’t mean disaster.

He looked at Sylvie, still with her back to him. The thick blossomy plait had fallen forward, leaving the defenceless hollow at the nape of her neck clearly visible. This at least had not changed. It seemed as tender and snappable as it had when she was very young. The executioner’s deadline he had once heard it called and was as chilled as if the trade had been his own. He stumbled into speech again.

‘I’m afraid I’ve done the wrong thing but it was only because I wanted so much to see you. And now I have I don’t seem able ...’ His throat closed on an excess of helpless, remorseful longing.

The rigid line of his daughter’s back slackened. Suhami was already experiencing a sense of shame at her uncontrolled outburst. This was not what she should be about. What was the point of all her meditations, of struggling to walk in the light and send out loving rays to all sentient beings if she could not even welcome a single one of them with courtesy. Her father was a hateful man but she must not hate him. He had done her immeasurable harm but she must not seek revenge. The Master had counselled her to this effect and she knew that he was right. To harbour malice damaged only oneself. Her father was to be pitied. Who in the whole world loved him? But I - Suhami took a long and consoling breath - I have known love. From the Master, friends here, Christopher. I have been nourished and comforted. Should I not be kind in my turn? She turned and faced him. He still looked bullish but post-picador, his chin sunk on his chest.

‘I’m sorry too. You mustn’t think ...’ She struggled to find something honest to say. ‘Everyone is intrigued at the thought of meeting you.’

Guy responded quickly. ‘And I’m looking forward to meeting the Craigies.’

‘The ...?’ Suhami looked puzzled then laughed as if he had said something really witty. ‘Oh - it’s not like that.’ She lifted the plait, letting it fall once more down her back. ‘It’s not like that at all.’ Then she picked up the tray. ‘I must take this to the Master.’

‘Won’t it be cold?’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’

Guy realised then that they had only been in the kitchen a few minutes. In fact it was barely ten since they had met in the hall. Ten minutes to roller-coaster through a meeting that had obsessed his every waking moment for days.

On the steps, she turned - indicating the glassed-in door by the Wellingtons. ‘You can go out that way. I don’t know if you’d like to look round the gardens? Or there’s a library.’

‘I think I’ll go and dump my bag and have a shower. I’ve booked into a hotel.’

‘A hotel?’

‘I decided to stay over. I thought it might not be convenient here. I don’t want to be any trouble.’

Suhami stared at him for a moment then smiled. The smile was prompted solely by amused surprise at the idea of her father not wishing to be any trouble, but Guy saw it as uniquely and transparently affectionate. All his previous confidence, vanquished by anger and distress, surged back. Everything would work out. All he had to do was play it her way. He could manage that. He would agree with everything and like everybody, and if he didn’t he would dissemble. As he watched his daughter leave, Guy felt quite proud as if he had pulled this impossible achievement off already.

Sylvie would see that he could change and perhaps eventually would be able to acknowledge that his love for her was true. Excited and hopeful, he made his way past the old stove and wellies and out into the sunshine.

Chapter 5

‘There’s someone on the terrace.’ Trixie moved her cheek on the windowpane. It made a soft squeaky sound but the man did not look up. ‘I suppose it’s Suhami’s father.’

Janet crossed over and, hand pressing lightly on Trixie’s shoulder, also looked down. Trixie moved away saying, ‘He looks like a gangster.’

He did a bit. Chunky enough head-on, foreshortened, Guy was practically cuboid. The bloom on his jowls, mauvey-grey directly after shaving, was now the colour of hot-house grapes.

‘And what a foul suit.’ So, eagerly allying herself, did Janet dismiss the Gieves & Hawkes double-breasted silk and mohair. She observed the powerful, surprisingly shapely head covered with dark curls squatting on wide, meaty shoulders. He seemed to have no neck at all. ‘I bet he wears a toupee.’

‘Course he doesn’t.’ Trixie dropped into a green flock armchair swinging her legs over the side. She was wearing a thin nylon housecoat and little else. ‘I think he looks rather virile actually. A bit like that strange man in your book. The minnator.’

‘Minotaur.’ Too late Janet could have bitten her tongue.

‘Should have been a teacher.’ Stitchings of malice pointed up the subtext. Dusty blackboard, scornful or indifferent pupils, lonely nights marking careless home-work. Lengthy unappreciated preparations for the following day. ‘Always picking people up.’

‘Sorry.’

‘What do you want anyway?’

‘I came to borrow some cotton.’

The truth was that Janet just loved being in this room, even when Trixie was not present. Sometimes she thought she preferred those occasions. She could be more herself then. Relax. Drink in the heady atmosphere: face powder, perfume, cheap hairspray, a bowl of roses. Once she had smelt cigarette smoke. This commingling of scents produced a slumbrous ante-bellum atmosphere with a base note of sweet decay. The roses were illicit. Garden flowers were meant to be cut only on special occasions and then displayed in public rooms where everyone could share them. But Trixie always did as she liked, banking accurately on the communal reluctance to criticise.

Janet pulled open a drawer and pretended to look for the cotton. She disturbed a peachy satin slip, gossamer tights and some garments made of oyster satin that she had once referred to as cami-knickers. An archaism she was not likely to repeat. The second drawer held two boxes of Tampax and several half-cup wired lace bras.

‘You won’t find what you’re looking for in there.’

‘No - how silly.’ Janet’s long bony face crimsoned and she dropped the filmy skimp like a burning coal. ‘I meant to put it on Arno’s list.’

One day, she thought, when I come in for a plaster or an aspirin, a tissue or a safety pin, she’s going to challenge me and say that she knows I really want none of those things. That I am here simply to breathe in the air that she exhales. Or touch the things that touch her skin.

‘I can’t get over those muscle-packed shoulders.’ There was always a curl of anticipation in Trixie’s voice when she planned some unkindness. Janet recognised it now and braced herself. ‘I wonder what he’s like in bed.’

What does she expect me to say? What can I say? Laugh it off? Make some all-girls-together joke? ‘There’s only one way to find out?’ But of course, if I could do that, she’d never have asked the question.

Pictures flared in Janet’s mind. Pale delicate limbs twined around swarthy, hirsute rutting masculinity. Hands gloved by black hair, roaming, probing. Thick blunt fingers squeezing tender breasts, knotting honeyed curls. Nauseous, near to tears, she glanced across at the armchair and caught a stone in the sling smile.

‘I really fancy screwing a millionaire. Everyone says power’s an aphrodisiac don’t they?’

‘Who’s everyone?’ Trixie was like Cleopatra, dowsing for gold.

‘I bet it’s true. This one really looks as if he’s built to do damage.’

It was the perfect opening for a sharp reply. For when Trixie had first joined them it was plain that a fair bit of damage had only recently been inflicted. Her arms and neck were badly bruised, her lip cut, her hair tufted patchily. But, in spite of Heather’s frequent early attempts to corner her for some compassionate one-to-one counselling, Trixie had never even referred to, much less explained, these injuries. Dare Janet refer to them now? She came timidly close.

‘Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who enjoy being knocked about by men.’

Trixie laughed: a spontaneous shout of amusement, as if Janet had said something completely ridiculous. Then she swung her milky legs forward again and stood up. ‘If you only knew ...’

‘Knew what?’ Janet stepped hungrily forward at this hint of a possible revelation into the other girl’s past. Perhaps Trixie would explain the letters that sometimes came in cheap blue envelopes. Or the phone calls where she hung up if anyone came into the room.

But Trixie just shrugged and sauntered over to the window. Guy was still there, chunkily looking about him. He had moved to the terrace steps which dropped to the herb border and was gazing over the lawn. Trixie lifted the latch.

‘What are you doing?’

‘What’s it look like?’

‘But you’re not ... at least put something ...’ Janet watched helplessly as Trixie perched on the window ledge, holding her robe bunched lightly at the waist, the fabric slipping from her left shoulder. She glimpsed Trixie’s daring excited profile and saw how fascinated she was.

‘Hullo ... o.o.’ Then, after a pause, ‘Up here.’

‘Hullo.’ He had smiled but you would never have known from his voice which was harsh, graceless and impersonal.

The gown slithered and slipped again as Trixie leaned out a little further. ‘Isn’t anyone looking after you?’

Janet opened the sweater drawer, saw the colours blur. She started to rummage furiously.

Trixie said: ‘How d’you like this weather?’ nodding at the drooping flowers and limp-leaved shrubs. As she spoke she agitated the loose drawstring neck of her blouse revealing, then concealing, a creamy freckled upsurge of swelling delights.

‘Hot for me.’ There was a suggestion of an upturn on the final word. It could have been a question.

Trixie laughed, husky, sassy. ‘I should think it is in that suit.’ She was standing on the terrace, a shade closer than normal civility required, her feet firmly on the ground and set slightly apart. The challenging stance of a principal boy.

‘A drink might help,’ continued Guy.

‘There’s some lemon-balm tea in the fridge.’

‘I meant a real drink. I’m just going to check in at my hotel. We could get something there.’

‘Ohhh ...’ This is so sudden said the quickened breath and downswept baby-doll lashes. ‘I don’t know about that.’

Trixie’s confusion, which Guy immediately labelled an attack of the cutes, was not entirely faked. Flinging on some clothes, running down to the terrace she had been driven by nothing more complicated than a childlike wish to gaze at someone rich and famous. But not long after introducing herself - and they had been talking for about ten minutes now, mainly about Suhami - she became aware of a not unfamiliar physical agitation. Her remark about money being a turn-on, made half in jest and half from a wish to irritate Janet, had proved to be compellingly accurate.

Trixie had never heard the saying the rich are different from us only in that they have more money, and if she had would have profoundly disagreed. Guy seemed to her a most mysterious being. The personification of a character previously only encountered in power-packed soap operas. Wheeling and dealing, making and breaking lives, glittering at the top of a shining dynastic tree in sultanic splendour.

They walked towards the car. Trixie stared at the diamond-hard mirror-bright perfection of the sweeping fuchsia chassis. At the huge headlamps, dazzling whitewall tyres and the hood that was like the furled sail of a yacht. It did not occur to her to pretend to be unawed. She said: ‘How absolutely beautiful. You must be very rich.’

To which Guy replied simply, ‘I’m as rich as God.’ Furneaux, seeing their approach, put down his Evening Standard, donned his peaked suede cap and jumped out to open the rear door. Trixie climbed in and perched on the edge of the seat with great delicacy as if it were made of spun glass. But once they had moved off she gradually edged back until, by the time they entered Causton, she was nestling in the corner, one arm lying casually over the side ready to wave should she, in fact or pretence, spot an acquaintance.

Guy, working on his usual principle of never doing one thing when you could be doing half a dozen, was edging his hand ever closer to Trixie’s knee, looking into her eyes and questioning her further about the commune.

‘What’s he like then - this guiding light?’

‘The Master? All right. That is kind and ... you know ... well, good.’ It surprised Trixie, now that she was asked, to realise how little she could think of to say. Guy still looked expectant. She scraped around for another morsel. ‘He’s wonderful to talk to.’ Everyone said this so it must be true, though Trixie’s own occasional tête-à-tête with the magus had left her feeling exposed and nervous rather than comforted. ‘He spends a lot of time in meditation.’

Guy snorted. He was deeply contemptuous of anyone not fully engaged in the chaotic cut and thrust of the working world. He himself, as he constantly pointed out, worked a forty-eight-hour day. Felicity said he made it sound as if he were breaking stones.

Trixie was much more interested in hearing about Guy’s life than talking about her own, but before she could turn the conversation round he said: ‘You must know more about him than that.’

‘No, honestly.’

‘Come on - you’re an intelligent girl.’ Guy smiled into the slightly blank unfinished face. ‘For instance - does he own the place?’

‘I don’t know. There’s a committee runs things.’ His hand caressed her knee. ‘May, Arno. People who’ve been here a long time. Don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’ The vulgar energetic pounce in his voice was almost unnerving. His powerful bulk gave off a multiplicity of scents: tobacco and liquor, hair oil, sharp lemony cologne inadequately masking male sweat. He closed the gap between them and whispered in her ear. Trixie gasped.

‘That’s an awful thing to say.’

‘I’m an awful man.’

Guy’s hand ascended a little higher, exploratory, determined. He did not agree with the superstition often held by soldiers and athletes that linked sexual intercourse with a depletion of physical reserves. Sex left Guy clear-headed, drained of troublous humours and smartly on his toes. He would need to be all those things if the evening were to go as successfully as he had planned, and he regarded Trixie’s appearance as fortuitous in the extreme. He took her hand, turned it over and scratched the palm with his nail.

When, with some difficulty, Trixie unglued her gaze from that of her libidinous companion, it came to rest on Furneaux’s back. Although the line of his body was slide-rule straight and his eyes, reflected in the driving mirror, fixed squarely on the road ahead, she got the strong impression he was laughing.

Guy pressed his full, red, hot lips to Trixie’s ear, slipped the third finger of his right hand between the third and fourth fingers of her own and pushed it, more and more quickly, back and forth. Trixie tried, not too determinedly, to move away. She did not appreciate that it was only the fact and duration of the journey that caused her to be exposed to all these rousing preliminaries. Guy’s usual idea of foreplay was to check if the girl was awake.

The car swung into the winding drive of Chartwell Grange and Trixie smoothed down her hair. Furneaux parked and unloaded the bags. The reception area was huge with many glazed-chintz sofas, deep armchairs and little tables holding magazines of a sporty or countrified nature. There were also two magnificent flower arrangements perched on Corinthian-style columns.

If Guy had been the sort to apprehend other people’s sensitivities, he might have spotted a certain coolness behind the ‘Welcome’ sign at reception. Little Jill Meredith, who had taken the Gamelin reservation, had been most distressed at his secretary’s manner. When Jill politely inquired if both guests required a double en suite the girl had drawled: ‘Don’t be bloody stupid. Haven’t you got an annexe or something? Put the chauffeur in there.’

There was no call, Jill’s boss had agreed whilst comforting his employee with an iced Malibu, to take that tone. Politeness cost nothing. Jill nodded and wished she’d thought of such a witty comeback at the time. Now she handed over the keys without a smile. A pageboy in a musical comedy get-up with white gloves under one epaulette went off with Guy’s case.

‘Now the drinks - hmm?’ Guy turned to his companion. Keeping his arm tightly round her waist.

Trixie nodded, looking up at him with a thrilled, slightly nervous possessiveness. She was sure that everyone in the hotel must know who he was and consequently believed her own status to be elevated accordingly. But middle-aged businessmen bringing secretaries, personal assistants, girl Fridays or just companions of the night were regular features at the Grange. These youthful appendages were described by the staff as excess baggage and universally despised, not on any moral grounds but because they never tipped.

‘Some Scotch ... Gin. Ice. Soda.’

‘When would you -’

‘Now.’

‘Would that be in the Tally Ho lounge, sir?’ asked reception.

‘If you want it emptied in five seconds flat.’ Jill Meredith blushed. ‘Otherwise outside my door.’

‘All the ice’ll melt,’ giggled Trixie as they entered the lift, blissfully unaware that the lightning and brutal rapacity of Guy’s technique would hardly give a single cube as much as a chance to sweat.

Hands up her skirt before the lift door closed, grand-standing crotch rubbed her thigh. Once inside the room he was on her like a wolf. Tearing, pinching, nibbling, biting. Non-stop obscenities poured from his mouth. Unzipped but fully dressed, he drove into her with effortful satisfaction. At the last, forcing her head towards his groin.

‘No,’ squealed Trixie ... ‘I’m not doing that -’

‘Go down ...’ Guy grasped her hair and she shrieked with pain. ‘Go down you obstinate bitch ...’

When he had finished Trixie ran into the bathroom, opened the complimentary brush and toothpaste kit and scrubbed her teeth and gums, her tongue, even her lips. Then she gargled, rinsed several times with mouthwash and drank a tumbler of water. But the taste of him remained.

She stared at herself in the glass. At her bruised and bitten breasts and at the red weals on the stinging flesh of her arms. She walked stiffly back to the bedroom, picked up her torn pants and rag of a blouse and looked around for her skirt.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, becoming conscious of an agonising cramp in the muscles of her back. Not wishing to look at Guy, she focused on a bowl of fruit. The card read: Having a wonderful time? Great. Tell your friends. If not tell us. Best wishes, Ian and Fiona.

Guy had brought in the drinks and was mixing a large Scotch. He took a deep draught then removed a wallet from his inside pocket, extracted a note and dropped it on the bed saying, ‘There you go.’

He always paid for casual sex. There was no come-back then. No one owed anyone a thing. No rubbish about meeting again and keeping in touch or giving each other a bell. And no dreary monologues about unhappy childhoods. In and out. That was it.

Trixie stared at the money. Guy took off his jacket, hung it on the back of a chair and started tugging at his tie. He took another swig of Scotch and jerked a thumb at the tray: ‘Help yourself.’ Receiving no reply he said: ‘What’s the matter?’

‘The matter? The matter?’

‘Fifty’s all you’re getting if that’s what you’re yelping about.’

‘I don’t want it.’ Trixie crouched, hunched and shuddering. ‘I don’t want any of it.’

‘What’s this then?’ He grinned, stretching froggy lips. ‘Free bonking for millionaires’ week? Go on - take it. Buy yourself a new top. Not much of that one left.’

‘You’re ... you are ...’ She wrapped her bruised arms tight across her chest as if for protection. ‘Hateful ... you’re hateful.’

Guy stared at her, genuinely puzzled. ‘I don’t get any of this.’ He pulled off his tie and started unbuttoning his shirt. ‘But I’m already bored to death. Now you can help yourself to a drink and start behaving normally or fuck off. I’m indifferent either way.’

He disappeared into the bathroom, turned on the shower and came back to remove his trousers and underpants. Trixie watched, sick with rage and self-loathing. How could she ever have let him as much as touch her? He was repulsive! Shiny with sweat, covered all over with flattened, long black hairs. Even his dong, she’d noted sourly, looked hairy; dark and sleek like a rat’s pelt. He was peeling off his socks.

Trixie outsmarted, outgunned closed her eyes and sought refuge in fantasy. She took the Scotch and smashed it down upon those closely sheared curls then rammed splinters of glass into his eyes and mouth. Possessed of superhuman strength she leapt upon him in the bath, seizing soapy, slimy shoulders, forcing his head under the water till the bubbles ceased. Then she had an inspiration and called across the room: ‘I forgot to tell you - I’ve got Aids.’

Guy looked at her briefly, sharply then laughed. ‘Dear, oh dear. I was telling better ones than that before I was born.’

‘It’s true.’ But they could both hear the weak, almost pleading undertow. Guy gave a slow contemptuous shake of the head.

But then, her mind filled with yet more bloody scenes of annihilating splendour, Trixie came across a weapon of devastating accuracy. At the time this seemed accidental. Later she remembered their conversation on the terrace and the shadow on Guy’s face as he had talked about his daughter. She sat up.

‘Funny Suhami being at the Windhorse, isn’t it? With her background. And all that money ... You’d think she’d have everything she’d want at home.’ The change in Guy’s expression frightened Trixie, but the longing to get even forced her on. ‘Of course she thinks the world of the Master. I suppose he’s a sort of father figure. A bit peculiar really. Not as if she hasn’t got one of her own.’

Trixie faltered on the last words for Guy was walking towards her. She willed herself not to shrink back into the pillows. He shoved his face close to her own. She could see the open pores, the thready veins and spiny hairs in his nose.

‘I’m going to have a shower now. Wash the stink of the gutter off. When I come out I want you gone. Five minutes - OK?’ He spoke in a whisper but the whisper was so gorged with hatred that his breath scorched her skin.

As the door to the bathroom closed, what there was of Trixie’s courage vanished. Legs trembling, she got up and stumbled over to the dressing table. In the mirror she saw that her cheeks were wet. She hadn’t realised she was crying. How was that possible? To weep and not to know. She released a moan of self-pity, immediately silenced although there was no way it could be overheard.

She listened to him soaping and splashing. There were some tissues in a velvet-covered box. She took some and scrubbed at her face. She had far too much make-up on. The result of a frantic re-embellishment before running downstairs. Flinching at the recollection, Trixie attempted to moderate the damage that tears and perspiration had wrought. It wasn’t easy especially as she was without her handbag and consequently - it struck her for the first time - without money.

How was she to get home? The thought of approaching the chauffeur, first having to ask at the desk for his whereabouts, brought the shakes on again. In any case he wouldn’t take her anywhere without Gamelin’s say-so. Trixie recalled her previous intuition - that the man had been laughing at her. He probably thought she was some sort of prostitute. Perhaps they all did! Trixie turned from her reflection, overcome by shame.

She could still hear water but two minutes had already gone by. What would he do if he came back and found her there? Physically chuck her out that’s what. He couldn’t give a monkey’s about causing a scene. Money meant never having to say you’re sorry.

She stared at the fifty-pound note lying on sheets still pungent with the reek of loveless copulation and was disgusted to find herself briefly, treacherously, inclined to take it. Not for the sex but as compensation for bruised breasts, painful back and tender aching limbs. Compulsively, perhaps needing to protect herself from this dishonourable rationale, she seized the note and tore it in half. Then into four and finally into as many tiny pieces as she could manage. About to toss these scornfully into the air she noticed a wallet protruding from his jacket pocket. She pulled it out and began stuffing the bits inside. This childish occupation ignited a brief flicker of satisfaction. She pictured him, perhaps in some smart restaurant, searching for his credit card and releasing a cloud of fiscal confetti.

Replacing the wallet, Trixie felt something small and lump-like. She drew it out. A bottle, very thick brown glass. She unscrewed the foil-lined cap. Even without the label she would have recognised the contents. Glyceryl Trinitrate. Her father had carried just such tablets to keep the shadow of death at bay. He would never have left them in another room while taking a shower. Trixie tipped the tablets into her hand, replaced the top and returned the bottle to its original place. The water stopped running.

She stood staring at the white painted door. Behind it a clatter, then a sharp rap. A coathanger bouncing against the wood. He was putting on a robe. He was going to come out and find her. Not gone in five minutes but standing there with his life-support system, a little ball of sweaty white gravel, in her hand. Then a loud buzz. A shaver. Reprieved, Trixie felt a quick rush of energy and simultaneously a terrible apprehension of the seriousness of what she had done. It could even be criminal. She must put them back. Indeed their very removal now seemed to her an act of absolute madness.

But she had only taken a single step when the room was filled with the loud shrilling of the telephone. Guy switched off his razor. And Trixie fled away.

In the beechwoods which bordered the fields at the rear of the house, Janet paced furiously back and forth, kicking at leaf mould, stamping on fallen twigs. The dark interior with its sombre canopy of light-excluding branches suited her mood entirely. Tears splashed on to her lace-up walking shoes and her breathing was harsh and jerky. Occasionally she gave vent to a peculiar hacking sound. Something between a cough and a groan.

How Trixie had hurried, agonised Janet. God - how she’d raced about! Rubbing on lipstick, squirting clouds of scent everywhere - even down her panties. Winking at Janet. Singing: ‘Monee makes the world go round ... the world go round ... the world ...’ Swaying off with her seraglio walk.

It had been horrible. Pitiable and degrading; like watching the poor scrabble for bread. Janet recognised the exaggeration but the principle was the same. I could have given her money. She’s welcome to all I have. Janet scrubbed at her cheeks with a wisp of stolen lace.

He’d looked such a thug. She stopped in her tracks at the recollection and sat down on a fallen log. Built to do damage, Trixie had said. What sort of damage might he do? She was so vulnerable. Always trying to appear so ... what was the word ... streetwise? But really not much more than a child. Which was why Janet felt so protective.

That, of course, was all she felt. She was absolutely not in any way at all in love with Trixie. Never in a million years. Because that would make her some sort of ... well ... lesbian. And Janet would have been distressed and horrified had she been so described. Because she would never actually do anything. Could not imagine doing anything under any circumstances whatsoever. In fact was utterly revolted at the thought. Defensively, she regarded her more emotional friendships (and weren’t all true friendships emotional?) as being similar to the idolatrous pashes so germane to the plots of old-fashioned school stories for girls. Maisie Saves The Day. Sukie Pulls It Off. That sort of thing.

She had been picking absently at the rotting bark - it was soft like flakes of chocolate - struggling to regain some sort of equilibrium. Silly to get into a state. They’d probably just gone off somewhere for a drink. And he was only around for an hour or two. After dinner he’d be gone and that would be that. Surely?

Her scratching had disturbed some woodlice. Dozens fell to the ground and started scurrying about. One fell on its back and scurried with its legs in the air. Janet turned it over with her thumbnail then looked at her watch. Trixie had been gone for nearly an hour. She could be back at any minute. Might be already.

Springing up, Janet walked quickly to the edge of the wood and climbed the stile. She let herself into the grounds through the old door that opened into the orchard. As she did so, she was struck by a fierce urgent compulsion that something was wrong. That Trixie needed her. Was crying out for help or comfort. Janet began to run, stumbling across the lawn, tripping on tussocks of grass, using her arms like pistons - elbows tucked in - as if she were in a race.

As she burst through the gap in the yew hedge, a taxi drew up at the front door and Trixie got out. Calling her name, Janet ran across the gravel to lean, panting, on the bonnet of the car. Trixie appeared quite calm but was pale and clutching at her blouse in a rather odd way.

‘Sort out the cab for me would you, Jan?’ She hurried into the house calling over her shoulder: ‘Pay you back.’

Janet asked the man to wait while she found some money then, after he had driven away, she went upstairs and tapped several times very gently on Trixie’s door. But there was no reply. Eventually Janet gave up and went downstairs to help prepare the birthday dinner.

Chapter 6

Utterly transformed, Felicity sat quite still staring into her dressing-room mirror. She and Danton were enclosed inside a black faux marbre horseshoe supported by a cluster of grave-faced caryatids. The surface of this creation was invisible beneath a crust of glittering glass - jars, flasks, bottles - and metal - lipstick cases, aerosols, tins. The images in this small space, so grossly given over to a worship of the vanities, were multiplied a hundred times by the judicious arrangement of mirrored screens set at angles in the walls.

As his client rose, Danton moved away, hands lifted in a curious Kabukiesque manner. This gesture encompassed both pride and disbelief as if he could barely comprehend the perfection of his art. Felicity’s complexion was drained of all colour but for a pearly pink glow on her cheekbones. Huge eyes were shrouded in violet and silver shadows, her shoulders gleamed and shimmered beneath a wrap of iridescent mussel-shell silk. Lips the colour of rich dark wine were parted in dismay.

‘I look like the angel of death.’

‘Mrs G ... Mrs G ...’ What a compliment though, thought Danton. From the first the dress had said to him ‘think ceremental’, and what an inspiration it had proved to be. ‘You need some more champers.’

‘No.’ Felicity shook her head but the heavy mane of ashen curls barely moved. ‘Too much already.’

‘A line then.’ Danton always carried an emergency repair kit for his clients.

Felicity hesitated, ‘I’ve been off it for a bit.’ She watched Danton unscrew a thin tortoiseshell case. ‘Anyway - even if I do by the time I get there -’

‘Take it with you.’ Deftly he slipped the box and the glass fistula into her bag. ‘Chances are if you know it’s there, you’ll be OK.’

‘Yes.’

Already Felicity knew she was not going to be anything remotely like ‘OK’. She stared at herself in apprehensive disbelief. How on earth had matters come to such a pass? All she’d done was make a phone call. But from the simple action, plus her decision to take up the invitation, had arisen this capricious and bizarre metamorphosis. She felt she had been ambushed and yet surely there must have been a point at which she could have called a halt? A rejection of the dress perhaps - how wildly unsuitable she now saw it to be. Or the moment when Danton, after studying her newly washed hair from every angle, had finally cried, ‘Cold cinders.’

But that point had long been passed. In fifteen minutes the car would arrive. A terrible inertia now entrapped her. A pall of fatalism. She seemed to have no will of her own. Having been launched on a journey, she must continue. She saw herself at the dinner table. A spectre at the feast, like Banquo’s ghost. Guy would laugh at her as he did in his sleep. Sylvie would be distressed and ashamed. After it was over Felicity would haste away, cloaked and hooded, cast quite out.

‘Fragrance.’ It wasn’t a question. Danton’s fingers hovered in a familiar way about the jewelled stoppers. ‘L’Egypte.’

Very apt, thought Felicity. Heady and oppressive. Sealed tombs, dried-up corpses, dank lifeless air. He sprayed lavishly then re-swathed her hair in the misty scarf: ‘I’ll take your case down.’

She had gone along with the suggestion of an overnight bag and change of clothes, for protesting seemed onerous. But she knew she would not stay and planned to keep the hired car at the door to facilitate her flight.

Danton returned and stood behind his client. A final touch to the earrings, a rearrangement of a curl. Felicity bowed her head as if for a coup de grâce

‘Don’t look like that Mrs G,’ said Danton. ‘You’ll have a wicked time. Wish I was coming.’ In the street a horn blared. ‘That’ll be us.’ He tucked away his cheque and flourished her velvet cloak like a matador. ‘Ring me the second you get back and tell me all about your marvellous evening. I’ll be in knots till you do.’

At 6.55 precisely the Corniche drew up once more at the Manor House and Guy pulled once more on the iron rod. He was making no mistakes this time. Sylvie - no Suhami, he must remember this changeling name - had rung Chartwell Grange to say that the Master would see her father at seven o’clock for a brief talk before dinner.

Guy had been elated at the sound of her voice. He was already longing to see her again, greedy for an opportunity to repair the damage done this afternoon. But softly, softly ... He must feel his way along. Be careful not to offend. Keep his opinions to himself. It would be bloody difficult but he would do it because he had found her and she must never be lost again.

At that moment a pillar of fire came round the corner. Scarlet and orange draperies floated, flared, flickered and flamed. They were encircled by a belt studded with stones like embers. It shimmered to a halt and spoke.

‘You’re not wearing indigo.’

‘I never wear indigo,’ said Guy. ‘What’s indigo?’

‘You should. You’re over-aggressive. Too much red.’

‘I never wear red either.’ Guy thought, look who’s talking, and felt some perturbation as if the conversation was already out of control.

‘In your aura, man. Positively seething. Plus a hole in it big as a cantaloupe.’

‘Is ... is there?’

‘Etheric leakage is no joke.’ May looked stern as she opened the door. ‘There’s also a lot of murky spots. You’re not a miser by any chance?’

‘Certainly not,’ replied Guy peevishly, following her into the hall. How could anyone who had treated himself to a Rolls-Royce Corniche possibly be called miserly?

‘Well, I see a grave imbalance, Mr Gamelin. Too much of one activity I suspect. I have no wish to pry. But if you crave worldly success -’

‘I have worldly success. I crave nothing.’ Except a daughter. Ah Sylvie - my grave imbalance. My life.

‘I’m here to see -’

‘I know all about that. I’ll take you. This way please.’ She surged off, with Guy in hot pursuit. They were passing the door behind which he had discovered the mad boy when she spoke again.

‘Are you staying over?’

Guy mumbled something about a hotel.

‘Excellent. Tomorrow you must come and choose some bottles and I’ll get you on to a corrective regime.’

Guy wasn’t at all sure about that. The words ‘colonic irrigation’ sprang to mind. He asked what the consultation might involve.

‘I start with the chakras. Give them a good rinse, clear the nadis. Then I try and get in touch with one of the grand Masters. Mine is inestimable. She’s a first chohan of the seventh ray you see.’

‘But you have a master here already,’ said Guy, struggling to keep a straight face. ‘Couldn’t we just ask him?’

He was intrigued by May’s response. She appeared flustered and the rhythm of that splendid stride was momentarily broken.

‘Oh - I couldn’t do that. He’s ... tired at the moment. Hasn’t been too well.’

‘My daughter didn’t mention it.’

‘Really?’ May had stopped in front of a carved door. She knocked and waited. Then, apparently answering a response which to Guy was inaudible, she opened the door and said: ‘Mr Gamelin is here, Master,’ and ushered him in.

The impression first received was of a quite large room but Guy quickly realised that this was because the place was nearly empty. It reminded him of a Japanese interior, pale and uncluttered. A negation of a room. There were two cushions on the floor, a screen near the window and a wooden frame over which stretched a piece of silk dyed in fabulous bird-of-paradise colours.

A man arose from one of the cushions in an enviously supple way and came forward to greet him. Guy looked into eyes so compelling that it was a moment before he noticed any other details of the man’s appearance. When he did so, he was immediately comforted. Long white hair, blue robe, sandalled feet - a pathetically transparent straining for spiritual effect. A drawing by a hack artist. Astroth: Master of the Universe. Guy shook hands forcefully and grinned.

Invited to sit, he lowered himself with some difficulty on to a cushion, remaining bolt upright, hands flat on the floor behind him, legs sticking straight out. He regretted the discomfort whilst appreciating the strategy. Craigie obviously had more orthodox seating (no one lived in a shell this bare), but had deliberately removed it to place his audience at a disadvantage. A fakir’s version of the ‘look who’s in the highest chair’ manoeuvre. It’ll take more than that, Craigie. Guy looked with a fierce and challenging encouragement, mano-a-mano, at his companion, who smiled faintly in return but did not speak.

The silence lengthened. When it began, Guy was restless - his mind, as always, furiously thrusting and parrying, plotting the destruction of opposing hordes but then, as the seconds and then the minutes slid by, all his whirling aggravation became first muted and then displaced. He could still hear his bombastic inner voice but faintly, like the sounds of battle beyond distant hills.

Guy was not usually at ease with silence. He liked what he called ‘a bit of life’, by which he meant a bit of noise. But now the quiet was affecting him strangely. He seemed to be settling into it as into a huge, consoling embrace. He was tempted to let go. To rest safely. A burden seemed to have been lifted from his back and all motion stalled. He felt that he should comment on this extraordinary state of affairs, but the language needed to express such sentiments seemed to be unavailable, so he continued to sit. There seemed to be no hurry for anything and he no longer felt uncomfortable.

The room was filled with light from the setting sun and the strip of silk caught fire. As Guy stared at it, the zinging colours developed in intensity - glowing to such an extent that they seemed almost to be alive and pulsing with energy. He found it impossible to take his eyes off this luminous transformation and began to wonder if he was being hypnotised. And then the other man spoke.

‘I’m so glad that you could come and visit us.’

Guy collected himself, attempted to ball up the soft spread of his attention. It wasn’t easy. ‘The gratitude is mine. For your kindness to my daughter.’

‘She’s a delightful girl. We are all extremely fond of Suhami.’

‘I was very worried when she disappeared.’ Rule One. Never acknowledge a weakness. ‘Not that we were close.’ Rule Two. Or admit failure.

What was wrong with him? This was the adversary. The father figure that Sylvie thought the world of. Guy struggled to reactivate his previous sensations of jealousy and revenge. Without them he felt naked. He stared into the brilliant blue eyes and calm expressionless face. The flesh had fallen in at the side of the nose. It was sharp and pointed, an old man’s nose. Hold fast to that. He’s decrepit. One foot in the grave. But what about that jaw? A soldier’s jaw. A soldier’s jaw in a monk’s face. What was being signalled here? Guy felt completely at a loss.

‘Even in the closest of families young people must break away. It is always painful.’

There was something about Craigie’s presence, perhaps the deep concentration of his attention, that demanded a response. Guy said, ‘Pain is putting it mildly.’

‘These rifts can be healed.’

‘D’you think so? Do you really think that’s possible?’

Guy leaned forwards, hands clasped. And started to talk. Streams of resentful reminiscence poured from his lips. Torrents of remorse. Floods of self-justification. On and on it went, seemingly without end. Guy heard it all with feelings of incredulous disgust. Such loathsome black fecundity. And yet - the ease with which it flowed! As if it had been waiting all these years in a pounce posture on the back of his tongue.

When finally it was over he was exhausted. He looked across at Craigie who was looking down at his hands. Guy tried to read the other man’s expression which struck him as one of concerned detachment, but this could surely not be the case. You could be one or the other but not both. And certainly not both at once. Guy sat for several moments more until the longing to evoke some sort of response became too much for him. He struggled to gather his wits then added a vindicative coda.

‘I gave her everything.’

Ian Craigie nodded sympathetically. ‘That’s understandable. But of course it doesn’t work.’

‘Can’t buy love you mean? That’s for sure. Otherwise there’d be no lonely millionaires.’

‘My point is that ultimately things cannot satisfy, Mr Gamelin. They have no life you see.’

‘Ah.’ Guy did not see. Surely things, acquisitions to display and use, were what it was all about. How else did people know what sort of man you were? And surely on the most basic level one needed a house, food, warmth and clothing. He said as much.

‘Of course this is true. But there is a fourth great need which we ignore at our peril. And that’s the need for intoxication.’ He smiled, correctly interpreting Guy’s translation of the word. ‘I refer to emotional and spiritual intoxication. We see it at the games sometimes. Hear it in music ...’

‘I understand that.’ Guy recalled the crowding glass canyons of the city. The dramatic rites of passage. Smoke-filled boardrooms; daggers noiselessly drawn. That was bloody intoxicating if you like. ‘But I don’t see how, here ...’ He gave an all-inclusive wave.

‘Here we are in love with prayer. And the pursuit of goodness.’

A disturbing hint of irony. Guy disliked irony, seeing it as a weapon needed only by the smart-arsed weakling. ‘You sound as if you don’t take it seriously.’

‘I take the quest very seriously. But people, no. At least only rarely.’

Guy felt suddenly cold as if a source of comfort had been capriciously withdrawn. Had the warmth, then, the understanding that he was pouring out his sorrow to an empathetic and receptive intelligence been no more than an illusion? Guy felt aggrieved. Cheated even. ‘The pursuit of goodness? I don’t quite understand.’

‘No. Abstract nouns are always difficult. And dangerous. I suppose the plainest way to put it is that once the idea that such a thing truly exists ... that it is perhaps available and we can experience it - once that idea has pricked you, it never afterwards leaves you quite alone.’

Guy thought of his all-consuming love and understood completely.

‘We spend most of our time here falling by the wayside of course, like everyone else.’

‘And is this ... pursuit what Sylvie wants, do you think?’

‘She believes so at the moment. Her meditations have brought her a measure of content. But she is very young. We try on many masks throughout our lives. Eventually we find one that fits so well we never take it off.’

‘I’ve never worn a mask.’

‘You think not?’ There was a rap on the door. He called out: ‘A few minutes May,’ and turned back to Guy. ‘We haven’t even touched on the problem of your daughter’s inheritance, which was one of the principal reasons that I asked you down.’

‘The McFadden bequest? Not with you, Craigie.’

‘She wants to give it all to the community.’

Guy gave a strangled groan and the Master leaned forward anxiously. ‘Are you all right Mr Gamelin?’

Guy lifted his face. It was stamped with an expression of stupefied dismay. His jaws gaped. The Master surveyed this pitiable spectacle then smiled, but without parting his lips. These were firmly clamped together. After a few moments he spoke again.

‘Please don’t distress yourself. The money will not be accepted. At least not at the moment. Your daughter is overly grateful for our affection, as children are who have not known love. Also the bequest reminds her of past unhappiness which is why she is determined to offload it, if not on us, elsewhere.’ Guy became pale, even his port-wine nose blanched.

‘This vulnerability is what I hoped to talk about with you. I wondered if some procedure could not be opened whereby I can appear to accept it but actually make some arrangements for it to be securely held, perhaps for at least another year. She may of course still wish to dispose of it but my experience,’ the irony was plainer now, ‘leads me to the belief that she will not.’

The rap came again. May put her lips to the door frame. ‘Master - we’re awaiting dinner.’

‘We’ll come back to this, Mr Gamelin. Please don’t be alarmed. Something can be worked out.’

Behind this impeccably courteous response Guy sensed that his reaction had caused amusement, and he resented it. What man in his right mind would not be alarmed at the thought of half of a million smackers disappearing from the family vaults! Loathsome though the McFaddens might be, their money was still as good as anybody else’s. He struggled to his feet and all his previous displeasure at being forced into such an undignified posture returned. Craigie did not move. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

‘I eat at twelve.’

‘Only then?’ You must get very hungry.’

‘Not at all.’ There was a withdrawing of attention that was almost palpable. A folding-in. Guy could have been in an empty room. ‘And now you must excuse me. I need to rest.’

In a massive tailback on the M4, Felicity’s hired car rested motionless between a much-welded Cortina and a BMW. The man in the executive job had stapled his finger to the horn. Felicity slipped off her shoe and gave the dividing panel a sharp crack with its rhinestoned heel. The driver jumped and showed a nervous profile.

He’d been keeping an eye on her since just after they’d left Belgravia. In fact, if he’d any choice in the matter, he wouldn’t have picked her up at all. Not only did she look like Vincent Price’s bit on the side, but she’d also been acting most peculiarly. Constantly pulling her scarf off then winding it back on, humming, waving through the window. He eased the sheet of toughened glass aside.

‘I told your firm I had to be there at half past seven.’

‘Can’t help the traffic, Mrs Gamelin.’

‘You should have come earlier.’

‘I came the time I was booked to come.’

‘But they should have known what it would be like.’ They’d had this conversation many times. He kept a weary silence. ‘The letter said half past seven to eat at eight, you see. The Manor House, Compton Dandon. It’s terribly important.’

No need to tell him the address. It was tattooed on his brain. She’d hardly stopped repeating it since getting into the cab. He’d also got it written down.

‘Can’t you pull out or something and overtake?’

The driver smiled, nodded and closed the panel, noticing with some trepidation that she kept the shoe in her hand.

‘Further to our earlier discussion, Mr Gamelin ...’

Guy, once more tacking after May along the corridor, did not hear. He was struggling to regain his sense of self which had mysteriously, subtly, been first fractured then destroyed in that quiet room. My God he thought - if I could learn to do that. What a weapon it would be!

‘I have a colour workshop in September. Still a few places left.’

Craigie - that frail and near-silent man - was a magician. A trickster. That must be it. What other explanation could there be? All this talk of goodness and spiritual intoxication was absolute balls. A cloak of benign mysticism concealing a secret imperator. As for this pretence of not accepting Sylvie’s money. A brilliant bluff. Guy was not unfamiliar with brinkmanship but had never seen a move so close to the edge. Quite breathtaking! As was this arranged ‘consultation’ with her parents. Set up purely to reinforce Craigie’s pose of selfless affection. The clever sod. Father figure. I’ll give him fucking father figure! He doesn’t know who he’s taken on. He doesn’t know he’s born. By the time they reached the dining room, Guy was completely himself again.

There seemed to be an awful lot of people. They were all seated at a long table. One or two wore expressions of suffering restraint. Guy supposed he should apologise for keeping them waiting, reasoned that it wasn’t really his fault, but thought it might annoy Sylvie if he didn’t - so he mumbled a few conciliatory words in their general direction.

‘I expect you’d like a drink.’

May was leading him to an armoire on which were two glass jugs. One full to the brim with dark pink liquid the other, half-empty, held something pondy green. Working on the principle that the natives always know best. Guy inclined towards the latter.

‘Now,’ said May with a conjurer’s wave at the jugs. ‘Which is it to be?’

‘Whichever’s strongest.’

‘The bullace is bursting with silenium. On the other hand, with turnip top you have a smidgen of iodine, quite a lot of vitamin C and a good thrust of manganese.’

‘I meant strongest in alcohol.’

‘Oh dear.’ She gave his arm an understanding pat. ‘Are you desperate for a fix? That explains the auric slippage. Don’t worry,’ filling a stone beaker, ‘it’s never too late. I had an alcoholic here a few months ago. Couldn’t stand up when he arrived. I gave him a dowsing with the pendulum, working him over with the violet ray of Arturus, gee’d up his chakras and taught him the salute to the sun. Do you know where that man is today?’

Guy realised he’d left his hip flask in the car. He followed his hostess, sipping at the green liquid. The stuff tasted better than it looked but it was close. He was delighted to see an empty chair next to Sylvie but, veering towards that section of the table, he was skilfully deflected by May who popped him into quite a different chair, taking the other place herself.

He started to call after her, ‘Can’t I sit ...’ when he was interrupted by a woman on his right.

‘We always keep the same seat. It’s a little way we have here. A little discipline. You are in the visitor’s place.’

Guy stared at her with some dislike. A receding chin, long greying hair held back by an Alice band, eyes bulging with sincerity. She was wearing a T-shirt declaring: ‘Universal Mind: The Only Choice’ and no bra. Her breasts, huge with big nipples, sagged nearly to her waist. The man sitting opposite her on Guy’s right hand (for he was at the end of the table) had on a shepherd’s smock. He passed Guy a plate of cow pats.

‘Barley cake?’

‘Why not.’

Guy took two, forced a smile and looked over the rest of the food. A dismal sight. More jugs of Château Ponderosa, torpedoes of bread spattered with blackish-brown gravel and a dish of gluey-looking stuff in which a metal spoon stood upright as if in a state of shock.

Guy thought gloomily of the dinner menu in his room at Chartwell Grange. Pan-fried Thwaite Shad nestling on a bed of Almond Rice bedecked with Dawn-gathered English Mushrooms and Tiny New Potatoes. This divine assemblage to be followed by either a Chariot of Crisp Cox’s Orange Pippins, Hearty Fenland Celery or Tarte Judy according to the consumer’s inclination and stamina. No doubt Furneaux was at this very moment cutting a swathe. The things I do for love, thought Guy - glancing towards his daughter, hoping for a smile.

Sylvie was wrapped in a beautiful apple-green and rosemadder sari. With her grave young face newly imprinted by a shiny dot and her dusky anchorite’s hair, she seemed to him like a child strangely cast in a school play. He could not credit that she genuinely believed all this quasi-religious tommyrot. She was sitting next to a youth with long dark hair who was addressing her with quiet intimacy, sometimes whispering into her ear. Perhaps this was the ‘marvellous man’ for whom she had left London. If so, he seemed to have got a head start.

Guy noted his falsely tender smile. Plainly a fortune-hunter. The poor girl was surrounded by them, bloody vultures. He did not recognise the paradox in the assumption that his child, beloved by him for herself alone, must be beloved of others only by reason of her presumed inheritance.

May was making inroads into a shallow tin dish, swooping and slicing with great panache. As she lifted the servings, long, pale yellow strings stretched back to base. She was talking as she served to the table at large.

‘... whole point about cataracts of course that the medical profession just will not see is that they are purely psychosomatic. The elderly cannot cope with modern life. Computers, street violence, large supermarkets, nuclear waste ... They can’t bear to look at it. Ergo - the eye films over. I mean - it’s so simple. Guy?’

‘Thank you.’ His plate arrived heaped with mysterious matter. A mosaic of red and brown and khaki, plus some black loops of rubbery-looking ribbon. Guy picked up his irons, noted a measure of surprise in the gathering and put them down again. Waiting for the others to be served, he began to sort people out.

Gnomish man with bright red shovel-shaped beard; woman with coarse bushy hair and a morose expression. That poor fool of a boy who sat on the far side of Sylvie. Guy noticed with deep revulsion how gently she spoke to the wretched creature, once going as far as to lay her hand on his arm. People like that, flawed with disease, should be put away, not let loose to make their grotesque demands on the innocent and tender-hearted. Of his afternoon playmate there was no sign. Guy didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. Strangely, for him, a flicker of unease had appeared soon after Trixie’s departure. He still didn’t understand her problem: she’d made herself available, he’d taken up the offer and paid on the nail. And for all the wails of wounded pride, the fifty quid had disappeared when she did. No - Guy’s worry was that she might tell Sylvie and, in doing so, misrepresent the truth. Perhaps even make out she wasn’t willing. So he decided, when he saw the girl again, to go out of his way to be friendly. Maybe even go as far as to apologise, although for what he still had no idea.

Once the serving was over a brief silence ensued during which everyone looked down at their plates. Guy looked down at his cow pats which looked faecetiously back. His neighbour sprang into speech. He had removed his smock and was now also sporting a T-shirt which instructed the reader: ‘Respect My Space’.

‘Hey ... how about a getting-to-know-you people hunt? I’m Ken “Zedekial” Beavers. And that’s my divine complement, Heather,’ said the grey-haired man. ‘Or Tethys, in astral terms.’

‘Guy Gamelin.’ They all shook hands, then Guy agitated his dinner somewhat with a fork. ‘What actually is all this?’

‘Well, that’s lasagne obviously. Goes without saying. This little heap is chick-pea purée and that,’ indicating the black coils, ‘is arame.’ Ken pronounced the word in a very odd way, raising his soft palate and honking like a goose. ‘Where would we all be without the ocean?’

‘What?’

‘Arame’s a seaweed. From Japan.’ He pronounced, ‘Harpahn’.

‘Eat enough - you’ll never have shingles again.’

Guy, who had never had shingles in the first place, nodded vaguely and put down his fork. Beneath the hum of conversation he noticed music. Or rather a saccharine reconstruction of nature going about her business. Birds tweeting, trees whispering and a persistent ripple of water. Listening to it was like having your ears syringed.

No doubt it was regarded as conducive to tranquillity. It seemed to work. The whole atmosphere was abnormally serene. All the voices were gentle. No one grabbed for what they wanted. Just gestured tenderly and murmured low. Guy wondered what they did with all their anger. Everyone had some after all. Part of the kit, along with liver and lights, teeth and nails. Did they meditate it away? Sublimate it under a blanket of kind deeds? Or - with a single babbling incantation - send it winging off for ever into the cosmos. What a load of jelly-bellied wimps. Huddling together, running away from the dark and from themselves. He became aware that he was scowling and, hurriedly adjusting his expression to one of polite interest, turned to his neighbour.

‘And what do you all do here at the Windhorse?’

Heather gave her long hair an abandoned fling. ‘We laugh ... we cry ...’ She cupped her hands then opened them with a bestowing fling as if releasing a racing pigeon. ‘We live.’

‘Everyone does that.’

‘Not in the deepest chalice of their being.’ She passed a dish of green stuff. ‘Some carracol?’ Guy hesitated. ‘A fine mincing of comfrey, marjoram and just a little hempnettle.’

Guy shook his head, concealing his disappointment well. ‘The one thing I’m not allowed. Hempnettle.’

‘Condensed sunshine,’ assured Ken, nodding at the fine mincing.

‘In what way?’

‘Impregnated with solar light.’ His crystal winked and twinkled, backing him up. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the five Platonic solids.’

‘Heard of them?’ said Guy. ‘I’m eating them.’ He smiled to show it was a joke then, sotto voce and with malice definitely aforethought, asked if there would be any meat.

This led to a long lecture full of warm sentimental invective from Heather, concluding with the information that ‘at any given moment the colon of any given carnivore would have at least five pounds of animal protein fermenting in it.’

‘Five pounds.’

‘Minimum.’

Guy whistled and Ken, perhaps to underline the sweet workability of his own gut reactions, let forth a whiffy crepitation. Guy wrinkled his nose. Heather changed the subject, offering Guy some more of the ersatz poteen that he had privately labelled ‘Château Scumbag’.

Having failed to persuade him, she asked: ‘And what do you do all day?’

‘I’m a financier.’ As if you didn’t know.

‘Heav ... e.e.’

‘Not if you’ve got the balls,’ said Guy pleasantly. There was a sticky hiatus. ‘Oh dear - have I offended? I thought you were all terribly close to nature down here.’

‘Certainly we favour the visceral over the cerebral.’

‘The dark night of the intellect,’ interrupted Heather, ‘is drawing to a close.’

It certainly seems to be in your case, thought Guy. ‘I enjoy a spot of cerebral cut-and-thrust myself,’ he said.

‘We are all millionaires of the spirit here,’ said Ken. ‘And think the rat race is for rats.’ This repartee was delivered through a mouthful of multi-coloured gubbins.

‘I’m surprised to hear myself referred to in such terms. Especially as a guest in your community.’ Ken turned scarlet. Guy was suddenly sick of them both. He leaned forward, contriving to speak with quiet confidentiality, secure in the knowledge that he couldn’t be overheard by the rest of the table.

‘Listen thunderbum, people do not abandon the rat race. It abandons them. The ones without fire in their bellies. And they crawl away leaving someone else to man the ship.’

Ken smiled and reached out forgivingly. ‘It makes me sad to hear -’

‘It doesn’t make you sad to hear. It makes you bloody livid but you haven’t the courage to say so. And take your hand off my arm.’ The hand leapt away like a startled salmon.

‘Where would we be,’ Guy pushed his luck, ‘if everyone decided to slink off and contemplate their navels. No doctors - no nurses - no teachers ...’

‘But that would never happen,’ protested Heather. ‘The number of people wishing to lead reclusive lives of a moral and philosophical nature - a spiritual élite if you will - must by the very nature of things be small. It is an intensely disciplined regime.’

‘I notice you take advantage of modern technology.’ No one, thought Guy, who had an arse like an elephant had any call to bandy the word ‘discipline’ about. He knew the time had come to shut up. ‘Has it never occurred to you that while you’re up there on your pillar of virtue, some poor sod’s on his knees down a mine so you’ll have coal to burn?’

‘But that’s his karma.’ Guy picked up a ripple of irritation. ‘He would be at a very low level of incarnation. Probably working his way up from a mole.’

At the other end of the table people spoke amongst themselves. Janet wondered if she should go up yet again to see if Trixie could be persuaded to come out. May asked if anyone else thought the chick peas tasted rather odd, and Arno said on no account was she to have another morsel. Tim continued to eat globbily, stopping from time to time to stroke the amber sunflowers on Suhami’s birthday bag.

Suhami herself ate little. She sat watching her father in a condition of growing unease. To someone who did not know him he was giving the impression of the perfect dinner guest. Nodding, talking, listening, smiling - although not eating much. Pretending? Of course. Brutal duplicity was his coinage. He played his games with little else. And there was something now about his glance and the set of his head that she did not like. She felt a sudden rush of panic and wished that she could perform a violent exorcism and vanish him entirely. Heather was speaking. Suhami strained her ears.

‘... and we believe that the only true happiness is to be found in forgetting the self. So we try to lose our individuality in a concern for others. The sick or dispossessed ... the poor ...’

‘The poor ...’ Guy’s voice exploded. Tormenting memories, long suppressed, struck fire. A young boy, kneeling before an electricity meter. Penknife jammed in the slot, unable to get knife or the money out and so feeling a length of chain across his shoulders. The same boy scavenging for fruit and vegetables from splintered boxes behind market stalls receiving great clouts around the head if he was spotted. A hollow belly occasionally crammed with cheap greasy piles of starch so that when the boy grew up he ate nothing that was not an invitation to a cardiac arrest. Richly sauced red meat, towers of chocolate and whipped cream. Lobster Thermidor.

‘... have to be strong ... get out ... get away ... or you go under ...’ Guy trembled and stared blindly around him, carried away by the intensity of his recall, hardly able to form his words. ‘... lice ... the poor ... they’re lice ...’

‘No ... you mustn’t say that.’ Arno leaned forward, pale but determined. ‘They are human beings and so to be valued. And helped, too, for they are powerless. Doesn’t it say in the Bible that the meek shall inherit the earth?’

‘They’ve done that all right.’ Guy gave vent to a goaded yelp. ‘There are mass graves everywhere full of them.’

A stunned silence. Everyone looked at each other unable to believe that they had actually heard such a shockingly cruel remark.

Guy sat motionless, his mouth still open, experiencing a thrill of horror. What had he done? How could he let himself be taunted into such intemperance by a couple of aging hippies when there was so much at stake? He lifted his head, cold and heavy as a stone, and stumbled once more into speech. ‘I’m sorry ... forgive me.’ He got up. ‘Sylvie - I didn’t think ...’

‘You can’t leave anything alone can you?’ Suhami, her face frozen, had also got to her feet. ‘Anything kind or beautiful or good you have to drag down to your own poisonous level. I was happy here. Now you’ve ruined everything. I hate you ... I hate you ...!’

Tim cried out in alarm and cowered in May’s lap. Christopher, grasping Suhami’s arm, said, ‘Don’t darling ... please ... don’t ...’

The others crowded round them all talking at once. Suhami started to cry: ‘My birthday ... on my birthday ...’

Christopher stroked her hair, May stroked Tim’s hair and Ken and Heather swung shiny beams of bright-eyed sanctimony at Guy who stood at the far end of the table - spurned and despised like the plaguey inmate of some lazaretto.

Then, as the soothing babble abated, he became aware of an extraordinary quality in the ensuing silence. The group had pressed more closely together and gave the impression of being both excited and alarmed. Guy felt a cool draught on the back of his neck. He turned and saw a woman standing in the shadow of the open doorway.

Phantom-like she rested against the jamb. She was wrapped in draperies the colour of fog. A huge bunch of cellophaned, beribboned flowers depended from one hand. She moved forwards, slowly dragging in her wake huge swathes of silk and tafetta which shushed and hissed on the bare boards. Half way towards the others she came to a halt, pushing back the misty scarf. At the sight of her huge-eyed, deeply hollowed face and tumbling mass of clay-grey hair the group drew even closer.

Ken murmured in wonder and disbelief: ‘Hilarion’s prediction. It’s come true ...’

The visitor looked round uncertainly and cleared her throat, making a sound like the rustle of dry leaves. ‘I rang the bell.’ A voice so timorous it was almost inaudible. She held out a square of green paper as if in support of such importunity. ‘I was invited.’

Guy, recognising the letter, gave a gasp of outrage and disbelief as he watched his wife, swaying like a narcolept, make for the nearest support, a low backed canvas chair. Reaching it she sank down, storm-cloud skirts billowing, and appeared overwhelmed with satisfaction at this simple feat.

Ken and Heather approached, praying hands to the fore. A few feet away they knelt down, foreheads touching the floor.

‘Greetings Astarte - Goddess of the Moon.’

‘Crescent Queen - lunar radiance.’

‘A thousand humble welcomes.’

Felicity stared at them and blinked. Then Suhami, pale with embarrassed recognition, said: ‘Mother?’ She crossed to the seated figure. ‘He said you couldn’t come.’

Guy winced at the dismissive impersonal pronoun. He watched Felicity’s blackberry lips shake with the effort of forming a reply. Instead she offered up the bouquet. Suhami took it, read the card and said: ‘How lovely - thank you.’

Guy recalled his own flowers forgotten in the porch, then realised that these were his flowers. Of all the bare-faced gall! Nothing he could do now. To rush forward and claim them would appear petty in the extreme. Sylvie would think he had brought no gift at all. She was saying something else.

‘He told us you were ill.’

‘My dear,’ said May, ‘you are ill.’

Not her, thought Guy. Snowed-under or drunk as a skunk. Come down to gloat if things go wrong. Or throw a spanner in the works if they seem to be going right. Just look at them all clustering round. Like some bug-eyed natives in a Tarzan film creeping out of the jungle. Hail white god in iron bird from sky! Christ - what an evening.

‘You poor thing,’ continued May. ‘You look dreadful. Suhami - get your mother a drink.’

‘Oh, yes please,’ cried Felicity and heard her husband laugh.

She caught his eye, her glance unfathomable. He saw it as triumphant and said, ‘You joined the living dead then, Felicity?’

‘There’s no need for all that.’ May produced a tiny plastic bottle from the pocket of her robe. ‘Your wife is quite distrait. Now - hold your hands so ...’ She poured a few drops into Felicity’s cupped palms. ‘Inhale please.’

Felicity did and started to sneeze. May said, ‘Excellent,’ and ‘Could I have a napkin?’

Ken and Heather, still on the moony trail, crowded close to Felicity and asked her if she knew what day it was. Felicity, who hardly knew what year it was, attempted to shake her head. Suhami came along with the drink. Felicity put her hand out two or three times but made no connection. Heather said, ‘Astral space is different.’

May took the glass and folded Felicity’s fingers gently round it. Felicity drank a little then, mind and tongue finally synchronised, started to explain her late arrival. She sounded anxious and defensive as if such tardiness might cost a stack of Brownie points.

Everyone said: ‘never mind - it really doesn’t matter,’ and ‘super that you’re here at all.’

They were getting used to her. Arno, closing the front door, found a pigskin case and brought it in.

Guy was right, of course, in thinking Felicity was not ill. The fact was that she had taken a line just before leaving home and a second in the car. Normally things went better with coke. You got a spiralling zing of light and airy confidence wafting you up on a stairway to Paradise. High-kicking the glitter dust en route to the stars.

But this time the reverse had happened. Felicity was experiencing a monstrously exaggerated sense of her own vulnerability. She felt like one of those poor soft-shelled creatures washed up by an ebbing tide and left dying on the sands. She shrank from the figures looming over her. They had hot stretchy eyes and rubbery mouths and kept changing their shapes. One reached out and touched her, and Felicity howled in terror.

Guy said: ‘Bloody hell,’ and they all turned on him again.

Just over an hour had passed since the dramatic advent of Felicity’s arrival. The first course had been cleared away to make way for an egg custard and Suhami’s birthday cake. The latter was a square ‘cider’ cake made by Janet with apple juice and soya marzipan. It had an ‘S’-shaped candle and a frill of recycled sludge-green toilet paper.

Nine people sat down for dessert. May had withdrawn in preparation for her regression but Trixie had been persuaded to join the company. This had been achieved partly through Janet’s persistent keyhole-cajoling and also by her cunning stimulation of Trixie’s curiosity. Janet, knowing Trixie’s passion for clothes, had dwelt long and inventively on the dazzling spectral beauty of Felicity’s evening dress. She had also, instinctively feeling it would please, described the row with Suhami and Guy’s subsequent discomfiture.

Trixie had not meant to come out till he had gone for good. Crouched in her room in a sweating funk, she had pictured a thousand times Guy’s fury on discovering the loss of his Trinitron. In each subsequent recreation he became a little angrier and more violent so that, by now, she was braced for him to come tramping up the stairs bellowing ‘Fee Fi Fo Fum’, smash her door down and eat her alive.

Then, when Janet said he hadn’t changed for dinner, Trixie began to entertain the hope that he might not yet have noticed the pills’ disappearance. And even if he had would he wish to upset Suhami further by causing another scene? Also (and this is when she decided to go down), what was to stop her saying she knew nothing about the matter? No one could prove otherwise. Certainly the things couldn’t be produced for she had thrown them out of the taxi window in guilty panic. So now here she was, sipping a little bullace supreme, gazing emerald-with-envy at the dress and occasionally sliding an apprehensive glance down the table at Guy. Eventually she caught his eye and received such a grotesquely false smile and vigorous wave that she wished she had not.

Christopher was talking. Telling them all about his last assignment (a documentary on Afghanistan), and the endless troubled trekking in the Chagai Hills, when a soft booming sound like a foghorn out to sea was heard.

Heather said, ‘The conch,’ and turned to Felicity adding kindly, ‘we have to go.’

Ken and Heather had by now reluctantly accepted Felicity’s corporeity whilst still regarding her as ‘sent’ in some mysterious and omened way. Since May had left the table, Heather had taken charge: filling Felicity’s mug (half warm goat’s milk, half Acorna) and also, from the overflowing goodness of her heart, doing some discreet counselling. A homely blend of psychological uplift, astrological prediction and tips on recycling negative vibrations. Felicity had listened with an expression of intent seriousness on her sleepwalker’s face, interrupting only to clap her hands when the cake was cut.

‘Come along then.’ Heather helped her up.

‘Where?’

‘We’re going to the Solar. You’ll see the Master. Won’t that be nice?’

‘Yes,’ said Felicity, screwing up her eyes in an attempt to discover precisely where the edge of the table was. ‘Will there be dancing?’

‘Spaced out,’ said Ken, taking the other arm. He added in an aside, ‘Picture the Bangladeshis that dress would feed.’

The others were already moving off. Trixie laughing, talking loudly, linking arms with a surprised but delighted Janet. Suhami with Christopher who was carrying her bag and Tim who stopped in the hall to gaze entranced at the lantern and refused to move until Suhami promised he could come back afterwards. Guy wandered alone, somewhere beyond the pale.

Arno, noticing this, overcame his natural aversion and joined the man, introducing himself. He even held out his hand but with such an air of brave and self-conscious resolution that Guy looked for a lion tamer’s chair in its fellow.

Arno. What sort of name was that? Neither one thing nor the other. Like one of those far-flung islands that turned up in the shipping forecasts. Force 9 gales in Ross, Arno and Cromarty. Guy ignored the hand, saying coldly, ‘You’ve got custard on your beard.’ Then he defiantly produced a Zino Anniversaire, the baguette of the cigar world, and lit up.

The Solar was at the far end of the gallery. A long room with high beams and a floor of black bitumen. Placed upon it in two impeccably straight rows and precisely equidistant were twenty-four large, thinnish cushions in loose covers of coarse bleached cotton. These parallel lines directed the eye to a small dais raised on three steps and covered in oatmeal tweed carpet. There was a chair on the dais with a carved back and at the foot of this a small collection of objects: the conch shell, a little brass gong and a much larger wooden fish so highly polished that the scales gleamed like a caramel toffee. As it was getting dark, the light - concealed inside a low hanging paper lantern - was switched on.

The Master, wearing white, was already in situ, resting on the carved chair. Tim ran across the room and curled up at his feet. The rest disposed themselves either sitting on the steps or standing behind the enthroned sage.

Guy was relieved to find he was not once more expected to squat on a cushion. He turned to look at Craigie who was welcoming Felicity with a smile of concerned sweetness. Noting the man’s fragile looks and snowy hair veiling his stooped shoulders, Guy marvelled at his own previous gullibility. How could he have been taken in, even briefly, by such an obvious poseur? Now, seeing that everyone was settled, Craigie was picking up the fish. He parted its widely hinged jaws and brought them together with a loud clack.

May appeared in the doorway. She was wearing a plain mauve linen shift and had removed all her jewellery save for a silver unicorn pendant. Her broad feet were bare and her hair, unbound and brushed smooth, hung almost to her waist. She walked towards them in a slow, very measured way - carrying herself tall and straight as if balancing an invisible amphora.

On the floor, in between the furthest six cushions and about ten feet from the dais, an appliquéd quilt had been spread out. May lay down on this, assuming a sacred expression, and folded her arms across her breasts. Then after a moment she sat up again.

‘Actually, I got a bit cold last time in that Viking longboat. Do you think I could have my little pelerine? It’s in my bag.’

On the platform Christopher reached down.

Suhami said sharply, ‘That’s mine.’

‘Of course it is. Sorry.’

‘Over by the door,’ called May.

Christopher collected May’s bag and took it to her, opening it as he went, pulling out a cream ribbed cape. ‘Is this the thing?’ He placed it round her shoulders where it lay in little folds like uncooked tripe.

May said, ‘Splendid,’ and tied the fastening. Then she lay back again, her dark eyes closed, and started to breathe deeply, pushing the magnificent cupolas beneath her shift up into the stratosphere. Arno gave a stifled moan of enchantment and was glad when the Master said ‘Lights’ and, hurrying to the switch, he was temporarily distracted.

‘Shall I stay here, May?’ asked Christopher, squatting by her left shoulder. ‘Then I can hold your hand if things get sticky.’

‘If you wish but I’ll be quite all right. One always returns safely you know.’

Once the light was out everything looked different. In the greyness the unmoving figures became drained of their humanity. They looked mysterious, their edges ill-defined, like statues in the garden at dusk. May’s breathing became more audible; deep regular sighs with a longer and longer pause between each exhalation.

When the Master wanted to know if she was ready, May replied on a sonorous note: ‘I Am Ready.’ Next she was asked to locate the very centre of her being and, after several more slow and even deeper breaths, laid the flat of her hand on her tummy.

‘How do you see that centre?’

‘A ball ... a golden ball.’

‘Can you propel that ball down? Down ... and out through the soles of your feet ... that’s right - push it away ...’ May gave a small grunt. ‘Now bring it back and push upwards ...’

May propelled the very centre of her being up and down, further and further away each time until it had expanded from a little ball to a great shimmering golden skin pressing against the walls like a giant helium balloon. Then, released, it suddenly floated free. Briefly May glanced down, seeing the twisty chimney pots and mossy slates of the Manor House roof and then she was off. Over the hills, over the clouds and far far away.

‘Where are you now, May?’

Where indeed? Below her things were changing fast. The terrain was now rough and wild. Forests and large areas of scrubland. Then some circles of tents within a high stone wall.

‘Tell us what you see?’

Descending, the tents became larger. One was rather grand. Bigger than all the others and flying a pennant, purple and gold. An eagle rising.

‘What is inside the tent?’

A pair of wooden pattens materialised, tied with strips of rag on to filthy masculine feet and raising them from the earth. In the right hand of the owner of the feet was a lump of dripping meat.

The place stank of sizzling fat, spilt wine and burning pitch from the torches. There was the most tremendous row going on. Men were yelling at each other, laughing, shouting. Dogs snarled, fighting over bones. Somewhere in the middle of it all a singer, accompanying himself on a small drum, struggled to make his lyrics heard.

The reeking air made the General’s taster sick. He put the bear flesh into his mouth, chewed on the sinews, forced it down then placed the remains on a metal dish. A new skin of wine had just been uncorked and he swallowed some of that. The General’s slave, a very young blackamoor, took the plate and goblet and placed them at the end of a line of similar dishes all rapidly congealing on a stone slab. The General never had hot food (not all poisons being quick to take effect, time must be allowed). On the other hand he was still alive.

The General was finishing sheep’s kidneys now. Belching, farting, wiping his greasy fingers on the negro boy’s woolly hair, tossing back some wine. Aping his betters he rested on his right elbow. His rough tunic was in disarray and everyone could see his knickers made from the hide of his favourite stallion and gleaming like wood chestnuts.

Mushrooms came next. The taster hated all forms of fungus. It was well known that some varieties were deadly and although these had mostly been isolated (thanks to various self-sacrificing predecessors), the odd one could still slip through. In which case the lives of both the cook and the taster would be forfeit. But the General loved them, believing that they made him potent in love and invincible in battle.

The mushrooms were stewing in a small four-legged bronze skillet, their juice a vivid unpleasant colour. The taster put a single stalk and a spoonful of the violet liquid in his mouth. Immediately he choked. The muscles of his throat became numb, his stiff coal-black tongue stuck out. Eyes bolting, he fell and upset the skillet, scalding his arms on a steaming mass of food.

He briefly comprehended startled faces and the slave running, then paralysis spread downwards to his chest and life closed up inside him like a fan.

‘May ... May ...’ The words were knotted with terror as Arno heard the strangled choking. He was first from the dais, flinging himself on his knees at her side. Other people followed, crowding round. Even Felicity, looking dreamily puzzled rather than alarmed, drifted over to glance down at the figure wrenching itself into such terrible loops and arches on the appliquéd quilt.

‘Do something!’ cried Arno. ‘Someone ... do something ...’ He snatched May’s hand from Christopher’s grasp and started to chafe and rub it between his own.

‘Give her the kiss of life.’

‘She’s not drowning.’

‘How do you know she’s not drowning?’

‘Shouldn’t we loosen her belt?’

‘Look at her face!’

‘Take the pillow away. Lay her flat.’

‘She can’t breathe as it is.’

‘Ken’s right. That’ll just make things worse.’

‘We need some agrimony.’

‘I’d have thought there was more than enough agrimony here already.’

‘Remarks like that are not particularly helpful, Mr Gamelin.’

‘Sorry.’

‘This is actually an emergency in case you haven’t noticed.’

‘I’m sorry - all right?’

May drew back her lips and gargled horribly.

‘What would she say if she could speak?’

‘Think colour according to the cosmic law.’

‘That’s right she would. What day is it?’

‘Friday.’

‘That’s violet.’ Heather leaned closer and shouted, ‘May - can you hear me? Think violet ...’

May shook her head with great force and, struggling to form the words, finally cried out: ‘Mush ... mush ...’

‘What does she mean - mush, mush?’

A puzzled silence then Arno cried, ‘Dogs. She’s calling a dog team. May is in Antarctica.’ He pulled off his jumper. ‘That’s why she’s shaking. She’s freezing to death. Quick everyone ...’

They all removed an item of clothing. Felicity offered her shiny mussel-effect scarf. Everything was piled up on May and finally, it seemed, to good effect. The gargle became a ripple then a mere bubbling sigh. The rasp of her breathing softened almost into inaudibility, her chest rose and fell in a calm, even motion. The hem of her shift stopped vibrating.

‘It’s worked.’ Arno turned a radiant face to them all. ‘She’s better.’

As he spoke, May opened her eyes, gave a great yawn and sat up. ‘My goodness! The most exciting adventure yet, I do believe. What on earth are all these things?’

‘We thought you were cold.’

‘You were shivering.’

‘Nonsense. Sweltering in that tent. Someone put the lights on and I’ll tell you all about it.’

Christopher went to do so. As light flooded the room, people started to pick up their bits and pieces and don them again. May called across to her mentor: ‘Well, Master that was quite -’ She broke off and gave a loud exclamation. Attracted by this the others, too, turned and stared.

The Master was standing just in front of his chair. Slowly and seemingly with great effort he lifted his right arm. A finger pointed. Then he fell, very gracefully with a slow turning movement so that he came to rest face upwards with his milk-white hair spreading over the oatmeal carpet. He lay cruciform, arms flung wide and in his breast a knife was buried. Right up to the hilt.