Death on the Downs

Eleven

Jude was glad Carole wasn’t with her. Much as she liked her new friend, she recognized that there were subjects on which they were unlikely ever to see eye to eye. And though Carole hadn’t said much when talk of alternative therapies arose, her expression and body language had immediately invoked scepticism.

Jude’s attitude was more tolerant. She knew the dangers of being too susceptible and relished the quote she’d heard somewhere that ‘if you have an open mind, people will throw all kinds of rubbish into it’. But she was prepared to approach an idea without prejudice and assess it on its merits. The fact that something didn’t work for her never led her to reject it out of hand. She didn’t rule out the possibility that it might work for someone else.

Jude had never been drawn to organized religion and the belief system she held was one built up over more than fifty years of life. It wasn’t rigid; as new thoughts came and old ones slipped away, the contents changed, but its overall principle remained the same. Jude believed that there was some purpose in human life, that it had been designed and was monitored by some kind of greater power. She believed that the most important relationships in life were not with that greater power, but with her fellow human beings.

And some of those relationships were easy and some were difficult. The relationship with the man who she’d just been travelling with fell into the second category. That one, Jude knew, was going to need sorting out soon. The prospect was not one she relished. She was glad she had the search for Tamsin Lutteridge to occupy her mind.

As a result of her instinctive tolerance, wandering round Soul Nourishment in Brighton’s North Lanes, Jude saw nothing that prompted her to ridicule. She enjoyed the smell of incense and was untroubled by the sound of wind-chimes. Most of the stock in the tiny shop was books – studies of astrology, crystallography, ley lines, synchron-icity and the meaning of dreams. The Road Less Travelled, The Prophet. The Alchemist.

But Soul Nourishment also sold New Age life-aids. Some of them had worked for Jude and some hadn’t. Though admiring their beauty, she had never received anything spiritual from crystals, but she knew people to whom they meant a lot. The same went for the tarot and angel cards. But she had benefited from aromatherapy and so checked Soul Nourishment’s stock of oils with interest. Acupuncture she believed in strongly, though she questioned the wisdom of selling needles and charts to the unqualified.

As with all tools for medical or spiritual healing, they were only as good as the practitioners using them. In her contacts with New Age healers, Jude had met very few out-and-out charlatans, but she’d met a distressing number of incompetents.

And few of them had been helped by the kind of patients attracted to such alternative approaches. Many of these were ‘therapy junkies’, men and women who felt there was something wrong with their lives and were looking for the quick fix that would, at a stroke, sort everything out. Such people tended to butterfly from one alternative solution to another, moving speedily from yoga to shiatsu to reiki healing to reflexology to colonic irrigation. It was the patients, more than the healers, who gave New Age remedies such a bad public image.

Silver, the owner of Soul Nourishment, was busy behind the counter, showing a display of scarabs to a bearded Californian tourist, so Jude moved to the back of the shop, where there was a cork board dotted with cards from counsellors, healers and therapists. Most of them offered solutions to problems of stress management, anxiety, phobias, personal relationships, alcohol and smoking dependency. Personal growth and major life changes were also catered for. Other cards raised the hopes of a cure for more specifically medical problems – eating disorders, depression, irritable bowel syndrome. Jude took down the numbers of the two that specifically mentioned ME or chronic fatigue syndrome.

“Jude, how’re you doing?”

Silver had finished with his Californian and she had his full attention. As she planted a kiss on his cheek and gave him a warm hug, Jude wished, not for the first time, that he didn’t dress so much like a stereotype. Everything about Silver seemed to say ‘owner of New Age shop’, from the Turkish cap on his head, past the chunky silver rings threaded into his ears, over the Indian cotton shirt, worn under a thick Bolivian waistcoat, down across the shiny striped harem pants to the thonged Greek leather sandals. His pale eyes blinked through blue-tinted thin-rimmed spectacles. How could Silver hope for his ideas to be taken seriously if he insisted on dressing like a caricature?

On the other hand, thought Jude, ever slow to condemn, perhaps it goes with the territory. Just as the checkout girls in Sainsbury’s wear hygienic, almost medical-looking tabards, so Silver was dressed in livery appropriate to his surroundings. One thing she did know, it wasn’t done for effect. Silver was wearing the clothes he liked wearing and – even more remarkably, given their cacophony of styles – clothes he must have thought he looked good in.

Maybe he still got the thrill of nonconformity every morning when he got up and dressed. Silver, then known as ‘Mr Silver’, had spent twenty-two years teaching geography in comprehensive schools before he saw the glint of alternative light at the end of the tunnel. He had earned the right to make whatever sartorial statement he chose.

“I heard you were in Spain,” said Silver.

“Just got back on Sunday.”

“Terry said he saw you.”

“He was teaching yoga first week I was out there.”

“Did you do the whole fortnight?”

“No, just the first week. Did some body- and voice-work. Second week I went off to the coast. Seafood therapy.”

“On your own?”

“With a friend.”

She was upset by the pang even the mention of him caused her, but Silver didn’t probe. Jude’s private life was her own affair.

“You been busy?”

He nodded. “Not bad. Particularly running up to Christmas.”

“Funny, really, isn’t it…the major Christian festival of the year and people come here to buy things that very positively have nothing to do with Christianity.”

Silver shrugged. “I’m cool with that.”

“Me too.”

He indicated the cork board. “You thinking of enrolling in something? I’m doing a course in transcendental meditation. He’s really good, the guy who leads it.”

Jude shook her head. “I know the basics. Don’t need to take a course.”

“No.” He blinked at her, clearly interested, but too laid-back actually to ask why she’d come.

“In fact, I was trying to trace someone. Girl I came in here with once. Probably last September, October…Name’s Tamsin.”

He shook his head. “Lot of people come through, Jude.”

“I know. Tall, blonde girl…very pale…very pretty…”

“Oh, now that does ring a bell. She was ill, wasn’t she?”

“Chronic fatigue syndrome.”

“Yes, I do remember. Because she came in with you that time, and then, only a few days later, she was here again, on her own.”

“Oh? What was she after?”

“She was looking for some books, you know, on the relationship between mind and body. I pointed out a few titles for her.”

“Did she buy any?”

“She got Setting Free the Soul.”

“Charles Hilton?”

“Right.”

Jude looked at the board. One card was larger than the others and better printed. Beneath a picture of a large country house, she read:

There was a Brighton-area phone number. Jude looked at Silver.

“Did Tkmsin know about this?”

“Yes. I pointed it out to her.” Jude nodded grimly.