Towards Sunset (third edition), Page 3

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  THE EMPRESS OF CHINA

  Time inevitably takes its toll. I had hung on to the old house as long as possible, but eventually had to recognise that it was physically and financially too much for me, and I should have to move. At least for the time being I was spared the indignity of a care home, but it was still a wrench; not only that, there was a lifetime’s accumulation of junk to clear. Most of it had no doubt lost any value it ever possessed, but some things were surely worth passing on even if I no longer wished to keep them myself.

  Sorting out the collection would have been a daunting prospect but for one of my cousins - goodness knows how many times removed, in both senses of the word - who was used to the job and volunteered to help. She was one of the more sensible members in a generally scatty family, years earlier I had helped her husband to set up in business, and she was not one to forget a favour. She was also congenial company, and since Gordon’s death had visited fairly often.

  This time she brought along one of her grandchildren, a bright and lively girl of about eight left in her care to allow the parents a well-earned holiday by themselves. While Daphne and I fetched down a packing case that had been too awkward for me to manage alone, young Sarah amused herself with the contents of a smaller box that I had previously moved out of the way without particular attention. As we manoeuvred the case through a doorway barely wide enough to take it, she looked up holding a clear plastic object about a couple of inches high, rather like a chess pawn. “Uncle Henry, what’s this?”

  It was something that with bitter regret I had previously given up for lost. How it came to be in the box was a mystery, but such things happen all too often and simply have to be accepted. As Sarah wiped away a speck of grime, a stream of coloured lights like a miniature firework display streaked away from that point and bounced around the interior, gradually fading. Wherever she rubbed, much the same would happen except that the colours and pathways changed, the brilliance varying with the degree of friction. She was fascinated, and spent the next three hours investigating the possibilities without exhausting them, so it was quite obvious how that little toy would have to be disposed.

  Seeing it took me back a good many years. In the early twenty-twenties, the government of China had decided that the country’s enormous wealth, power and influence warranted a return to an imperial constitution. In view of the outcry among the remaining independent states in eastern Asia, this was emphasised to be a purely symbolic change, in that the emperor would have little more than decorative functions. He would therefore not be from the world of politics at all, but internationally distinguished in some other way, and after much discussion the choice fell upon a concert pianist who like several of his kind had achieved great success in the west - that is, until his hands were mangled in a motor accident, and surgical repairs were not quite good enough for continuing performances. To give the position some substance he was in effect put in charge of official patronage in the arts and sciences, with considerable latitude in dispensing it.

  Political fashions changed, as they do, and when the emperor died from residual complications of his accident while still relatively young and without issue, the appointment was not repeated. Cynics suggested that the possibility had been a consideration from the start. Nevertheless his widow, a capable and widely respected woman, took over his work to rather better effect, and in his memory set up a series of scholarships in the arts and awards for promising scientific developments. Some of these were open to international competition.

  A few years later I was running a small contract research laboratory, and during a slack period had an idea of my own that seemed worth pursuing, only none of my usual customers would take it on. Someone pointed out an advertisement inviting applications for the next round of Imperial China awards, and it seemed interesting. I was vaguely aware of the scheme from odd items in the news, there was nothing to lose by trying, at least in the first instance, so I sent in an application. Evidently it passed successfully through the early documentary stages of selection, as I was invited to Beijing to present my proposals in more detail.

  The less said of the journey the better. Still, I got there, and despite the jet lag and anxiety managed a few hours’ sleep. Formalities at the palace seemed interminable, but I supposed security was as much an issue there as anywhere else, and although the invitation and evidence of identity were scrutinised in more than usual detail it was all done with perfect courtesy. Eventually I was shown to a waiting room that was comfortable if no better equipped with reading matter than the usual dentist’s, a book bought in the departure lounge failed to hold my attention, and I had a horrible dread of falling asleep at the crucial time. Fortunately the fear itself probably kept me awake.

  Besides the usual opportunist insertions by the tourist boards, hotel associations and so on, the invitation package had included the procedure for candidates who reached this stage: there would be a technical presentation to a panel of experts, followed by a more general interview possibly with the Empress herself to discuss what might follow a successful award. The presentation held only familiar terrors, but the other puzzled me. Would it be a mere formality, or did more hang upon it - whether my face fitted, or not? There was no telling. What really interested me just then was whether it would be with the Empress, as I hadn’t had the nerve to ask, and if so what she might be like.

  I hadn’t thought to look up anything particular about her, but as the wife of an international performer she would probably have visited the west at least occasionally, or so I thought. Presumably, too, she spoke some English, or this interview wouldn’t take place, though it might be only a few phrases learned parrot-fashion. I didn’t even know what she really looked like, as the pictures I’d seen were in full ceremonial rig and gave hardly any impression of the person inside.

  I was evidently almost the last of the applicants to be considered that day, and the one before me took a little more than the allotted time; I was kept twiddling my thumbs and wondering about the prospects, as the panel had been studiously non-committal. About a quarter of an hour passed, so there was clearly more than formality involved. An assistant then appeared with “The Empress will see you now, Doctor Latimer” and ushered me into the presence.

  It was a shock. Thinking back to the Moguls I had half-imagined a vast audience chamber with a throne on a towering pedestal and a figure of oriental magnificence - pure fantasy, of course, as I fully realised. It was still surprising, however, to find instead a rather small, ordinary office with a plain desk, and at it a middle-aged, grey-haired woman of obviously European descent, in a simple blue-grey business suit, greeting me with a smile of kindly amusement. “You seem surprised, Dr. Latimer.” That was the greatest shock of all: the last thing I might have expected was the distinct Lancashire accent. “Well, yes,” I stuttered. “Don’t worry, everyone is. Don’t let it distract you. Just to save your wondering, I was a music teacher in Manchester when Chang gave a recital and needed a page-turner, and we clicked. Now, to business ...”

  It had been stressed that candidates selected to present their case to the Empress or her personal representative should avoid technical detail and concentrate on more general issues, so I had prepared accordingly. We were well into my spiel when the assistant reappeared, apologised and whispered a message that evidently disturbed the routine. “Is he still there?”

  “Yes, but he has to go very soon if he’s to catch his plane.”

  “Hmm.” She consulted a document. “Well, it shouldn’t take long ... Get a taxi to stand by for him. Dr. Latimer, there’s a young man outside who’s suddenly been called home to a family emergency - would you mind waiting for another few minutes while I deal with him?” You don’t refuse an empress, however humble her origins, so I waited. The other man looked really distressed when we passed on his way in, and I suppressed suspicions of mere queue-jumping.

  Afterwards, the rest of my interview went without further in
terruption. Then the Empress sat back and pondered a while in silence. Eventually, “I’m sorry to keep you on tenterhooks, Dr. Latimer, but you’ve presented me with a difficulty. You’ll realise, I’m sure, that I know very little about any of the subjects involved in these awards, and for that I have to rely on my advisers. It’s always a difficult task to rank such different topics, and this year they find it quite impossible to break a tie on merit between your application and another. So the decision has to be my own. And it has to be essentially based on judgements of personality and circumstance. On this very slight acquaintance, my impression - right or wrong - is that you are the more likely to succeed without my help. So the award goes to your rival. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there it is.”

  I mumbled something about appreciating her consideration, and expected a conventional form of dismissal, but instead she then turned to a box that had appeared on her desk during my temporary absence. It held half a dozen objects of the kind that long afterwards intrigued Sarah, and the Empress took one out, stroking it in various places and gravely contemplating the display within. Then with a smile, “The young man you so kindly allowed to come in just now left these behind as examples of his work. Maybe to save having to pack them for his flight home, but let’s not be too cynical. Would you like to have this - as a memento?”

  “Well, yes - and thank you very much!”

  “Good. Now, I wish you a good journey - and do be sure to vindicate my judgement!”

  Back home over the next few months, I looked out for any signs that Mathers (I got the name from the appointments timetable) had had any success with his triboluminescent baubles, and in November advertisements appeared for Christmas tree decorations of that kind. They apparently sold quite well for several years until some other novelty displaced them in the public fancy. In pantomime the material seemed an obvious choice for Aladdin’s lamp, although it was found to be rather too sensitive and unless very carefully handled could be a troublesome distraction. As a more serious application, it was promoted in the form of self-illuminating handrails for public stairways, but proved too expensive for the rather limited benefit. In time it became little more than a historical curiosity.

  In later life I met Mathers occasionally and found him a decent sort. He had just about broken even overall on that project, but did better with others and ended up with a fairly profitable business. He had modest tastes so that was all he wanted, and at least it didn’t attract take-over sharks. Anyway, having one way or another given much innocent pleasure to a whole generation of children was cause for satisfaction in itself; few people could claim so much.

  I also kept an eye open more intently for news about the Empress, whose personality had deeply impressed me. Odd items appeared about her opening an institution here or addressing a conference there. Otherwise not much of substance came up until the 2050s. Then there was a great deal about relief operations after the disasters that struck China in that decade - the terrible flu epidemic of ’51, the earthquakes that devastated Chengdu and Chongqing in ’54, and the collapse of the Three Gorges dam soon afterwards with appalling destruction downstream. Hints between the lines suggested strongly that in such emergencies, the politicians’ response had been hopelessly bungled and inadequate, crippled by bureaucracy and corruption, until she took over and swept such obstacles aside. By the time discontent in the provinces broke out into open civil war in 2057, she was evidently the only one with prestige enough to deal effectively with the warlords for humanitarian purposes.

  She was visiting an orphanage in Xian to supervise evacuation from the battle zone during a truce she had negotiated for the purpose, when someone - accidentally, it was claimed, but the man thought responsible was lynched - let off an artillery shell that set the building alight. She organised the terrified staff, some to shepherd the children, some to delay the advance of the fire if they couldn’t actually stop it. Most of them got out eventually, and so did all but one of the children, but she didn’t. According to one report, she was last seen searching for the stray.

  All this passed through my mind as Daphne and I laboured over the contents of my loft, and I told it to her when we took a break. Sarah meanwhile listened, goggle-eyed at the climax, clutching the bauble; I’d never known her so quiet for so long. Daphne had evidently read my intentions and protested that I couldn’t possibly part with so precious a souvenir, but at that Sarah looked so downcast that it would have been a crime to deprive her of it. Daphne reluctantly agreed, contenting herself with insisting that it should be kept in a sturdy presentation box with a copy of the story, that Mummy and Daddy should always take care of it and that it should be a family secret - no lending to friends on any account. “And,” I added, “whenever you look at it, spare a thought for a very great and gracious lady.”

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  FLASHBACK

  The area was one unfamiliar to Henry, a gently rolling landscape with scattered villages visible from the escarpment on his approach. There was a farmhouse a mile or so outside the nearest, from its appearance still occupied although rather dilapidated, and strictly functional - an honest piece of vernacular architecture, dignified in its simplicity. It was approached along a track through the fields, rather overgrown but still easily passable. The farm seemed to be mainly arable with few animals in evidence, although with the crops harvested and some of the fields recently ploughed the birds were making the most of available pickings.

  There was no answer to a knock on the door but it yielded immediately, neither locked nor latched, with just a faint groan from the hinges. No answer to a call, either. After the sunshine outside, the interior felt rather chill and Henry shivered a little. The only sounds were a distant chattering from the birds and a gentle sighing of the light breeze that must have risen with the approaching sunset, as he hadn’t noticed it before. If he was to complete his errand there was no choice but to press on, so he went down a passageway towards a door that stood open at the end. The passage had no window of its own and the chill deepened noticeably, but evening sunlight still showed from the room ahead. It proved to be sparsely furnished, with a deal table and a few plain chairs, and a pair of shelves bearing an odd collection of plates, dishes and so on. Something impelled Henry to close the door behind him, but with an inch to go it met a soft but determined resistance. He pushed harder, to no avail. Despite the chill, which despite the sunlight was even deeper here, he began to perspire a little. With no visible obstruction, the door would still not close and he began to feel slightly alarmed. Then, for no apparent reason, a brass dish fell noisily from one of the shelves ...

  Automatically silencing the clock he struggled slowly awake, the farmhouse room fading gradually from his inner vision. He now paused, panting a little, trying consciously to calm his thumping heartbeat. This would simply not do. The dreams, variations on a theme, were becoming more frequent, their impact more marked, and he was sure that they must hold some significance that he ought to fathom. What it might be, however, he had no idea. He abhorred any suggestion of clairvoyance, yet the dreams bore no discernible relationship to anything he could recall from the past; nor did they seem related to any current problem.

  A direct attack on the question seemed unlikely to be fruitful, so dismissing it for the time being, he arose and prepared for his day. The weather promised to be fine, his hours were moderately flexible and with no particularly urgent business in hand he chose to walk the mile and a half to the estate agency where he worked on the other side of the little town. He could almost have done it with his eyes shut and indeed allowed himself to daydream a little. A lifelong bachelor, he still had occasional romantic yearnings and regretted slightly that his line of work offered little chance of drawing in the kind of attractive young woman who might appeal for help to Sherlock Holmes or Lord Peter Wimsey - not that he had any illusions about his own qualities. He was a decent, pleasant-mannered, unassuming man, no longer young and never handsome, with no particular hobb
ies or activities, and “Let’s face it,” he told himself, “a bore.” A woman would have to be desperate even to contemplate him as a prospect, and he could do without that; at any sign of interest, he would probably run a mile.

  The office post had arrived just before him, and the manager was studying one letter with a slight frown.

  “What’s up, Ted? You look puzzled.”

  “Morning, Henry. Take a look at this - tell me what you make of it.”

  The letter bore the heading of solicitors with whom they had done business several times to mutual satisfaction, though nothing out of the ordinary, and Henry wondered what was coming.

  It concerned the will of a client, a major part of whose estate was a property in rural Yorkshire. For some obscure reason - hints about a possible conflict of interest on the part of the obvious agents - an independent valuation was needed, and would their firm take on the job? Discretion would be of the essence, as it was important not to tread on sensitive toes; hence the reluctance to deal locally.

  “Seems a bit odd, Ted.”

  “Doesn’t it? But I’m rather intrigued. Oh, didn’t you come from around there originally?”

  “More or less, but not particularly close. I doubt if I’ve ever been within twenty miles of the place.”

  “Perhaps that would be all to the good. Fancy taking a short working holiday, going back to your roots and all that? Things are slack enough here at the moment.”

  So it was that Henry found himself ensconced for a week at a hotel in Ingleton. After a painful crawl behind a milk tanker most of the way from Otley, thanks to road works that prevented overtaking on the Skipton by-pass, he had arrived rather later than he intended but fortunately in time for dinner after a hasty wash and brush-up. In the dining room he noticed with mild interest a middle-aged, prosperous-looking man with a clearly younger woman - secretary, daughter or mistress? “Daughter” could soon be ruled out, and Henry thought probably a combination of the other two, although he reminded himself that they might just possibly be a perfectly respectable if unusually disparate recently-married couple - he had decidedly old-fashioned views of such things. “And none the worse for that” he would say if reproved for being behind the times.

  A party of youngsters had taken over much of the bar lounge, but Henry found an odd table where he could sit with his whisky and crossword, trying to shut out the noise. He was in the midst of it when another lone diner approached and asked if he might share the table.

  “Of course, yes. A bit crowded, isn’t it?”

  “Certainly is. The name’s Fraser, by the way - Jim Fraser.”

  “How d’ye do. Henry Armitage.”

  Fraser glanced over his shoulder. “I noticed the two love-birds disappeared smartly enough.”

  “So they caught your eye too, did they?”

  “You could hardly miss them. Well, good luck to them - whatever they’re up to.”

  Henry smiled non-committally. “None of our business, really, is it?”

  “None at all - but it’s interesting to speculate.”

  “True enough.”

  Light dawned on a clue in the crossword that had so far baffled him, and he quickly filled in the rest, leaned back with a satisfied sigh, and finished his whisky. Fraser offered a refill, politely declined, but got one for himself. Henry silently hoped that he wasn’t going to be stuck with a drunk, but Fraser explained that he always limited himself to two: “Liable to sleep badly otherwise.”

  “It’s good to meet someone who knows his limits.”

  “I’ve seen too much of people who don’t.”

  “Gets a bit much at times, doesn’t it?”

  “Certainly does.”

  Henry began to think that certainty might become a shade trying, but a welcome suggestion of doubt crept into Fraser’s conversation. “You’re not from these parts, are you?”

  “No, I work in the south - I hope I don’t need a passport around here!”

  “I’ve generally found people welcoming enough, so long as you don’t put on airs and graces. But saying you work in the south suggests that you didn’t start there.”

  “I didn’t realise you were a detective!”

  Fraser laughed. “Nothing of the sort - a journalist actually. Though I suppose the jobs may have something in common - especially with things that people have good reason to keep quiet.”

  “Is that why you’re here?”

  “No, just staying with my sister who’s had a bit of trouble lately. She had to go to Kendal this evening so I’ve dined out. How about you?”

  A warning bell rang for Henry, so he produced his cover story (mostly true, in fact) that he was born over towards Thirsk but had never got to this side of the Dales and thought it about time that he did.

  “Did you take a look at your old haunts on the way? You’d have seen some changes, mind you.”

  “No, there was no point. I had an accident just before we left, and something knocked out all my memories of the place. They never came back, either.”

  “Sounds as though you got off lightly. A bang on the head - I suppose that was it? - can have all sorts of nasty after-effects.”

  Henry agreed, and after a few more minutes of inconsequential chat Fraser excused himself to prepare for his sister’s return. Henry asked at reception about local maps and was advised to try the information centre, then retired himself. The wind had risen rather noisily, adding to the usual difficulties of sleeping in an unfamiliar bed, and Henry got through rather more than he had intended of the book brought for such a contingency. Eventually he drifted into his recurring dream, though this time with a difference. The farmhouse looked in better trim than usual, the track to it was well-maintained, and cattle were grazing in one of the fields. His knock at the door was quickly answered by a pleasant-looking woman who greeted him warmly and invited him in.

  “Come for the milk, I suppose?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve a few more eggs than usual - do you think your mum would like some?”

  “Probably, thank you.”

  Then the incongruity struck him. His mother had been dead for twenty-odd years, he hadn’t worn shorts since primary school so why was there a draught around his knees? - he couldn’t see them, the room faded into something like its usual dilapidated condition as far as he could tell in the failing light, and the woman’s voice receded into the dim distance. He tried to follow but met an increasing resistance until all went dark, the book slipped from his hands and a convulsive jerk pushed it off the bed-cover, waking him with the sound of its fall.

  With several hours to go before his intended time of rising, he settled down again but couldn’t help thinking about this novel variant of his dream. The more he considered, the more it seemed likely to reflect something in the forgotten part of his childhood, and he wondered what had happened to the farm in the meantime. In the usual scenario it was evidently still worked after a fashion, but very much in decline. Was that knowledge or imagination? How old was he in that version? And why did the terrain seem unfamiliar? Of course, because all conscious memory of it had been lost. As for age, beyond a certain point it was immaterial, but a vague sense of world-weariness that he now remembered pervading the dream suggested that it might not be far short of his own as at present. He hadn’t previously recognised it, and was surprised by the discovery. “Must be getting old,” he thought to himself. “As old as you let yourself feel,” came an unexpected mental rejoinder.

  With a jolt he recalled the usual cliché about talking to oneself, and wondered how far such an internal exchange might be common experience - not the sort of enquiry easy to slip naturally into a casual conversation. He comforted himself with the thought that it was just a facet of seeing both sides of any question. “You mean forever dithering,” promptly came back. “Oh, go to hell!” he muttered, and fell asleep.

  In the morning, the girl at the information centre was single-handed and fully
occupied with a group whose enquiries involved several long telephone calls. Meanwhile Henry found the Ordnance Survey section he wanted and browsed casually through the books on offer. A handy volume on walks in the area caught his eye, and he wondered if any of them might pass conveniently close to the property he was supposed to be investigating. Disappointingly, none did, according to the sketch-maps provided, but it had been a long shot anyway. The book was however attractive, and when the chance came he bought it for its own sake.

  Only later, reading the most nearly relevant chapter in more detail, he found a caution against taking a wrong direction at a point where the path forked. The false turn, he realised, would in fact be in the direction he wanted. Moreover there was note about a feature a mile or so from the junction that might warrant a deliberate diversion: a large house, now derelict, with in the grounds a model village, weather-beaten after long neglect but still more or less intact. Henry remembered being charmed by something of the sort in the Cotswolds, although there the model was of the village where it actually stood, so had to include a representation of the model itself, which therefore had ... In fact the scale precluded going many steps down that route, and Henry wondered about the possibility of building a computer model incorporating a scaled-down version of itself, repeatedly to a limit set only by the resolution of the computer, rather like the Mandelbrot set. “Very likely some idiot has done just that,” he thought - and then “Idiot yourself - whose idea was it?”

  Idiotic or not, the urge to visit the model proved irresistible, especially with the excuse of taking him closer to the real purpose of his visit. The stile marking the start of the walk proved easy enough to find, and there was space to park his car without seriously obstructing anything. The wind had something of a bite to it, and he strode out briskly, pausing only briefly for occasional references to the guide book where there was any doubt about the route. The fork, when he came to it a couple of miles on, was indeed indistinct enough for Henry to have started along the diversion without realising it, but he checked his bearings and continued. The path rose gently for about half a mile and then dipped into a slight hollow, in which the solitary house was very obvious. The boundary wall was broken in several places, but from a distance the house itself looked in pretty good shape; only closer was it evident that most of the roof slates had gone from the further side, some of the trusses too, so it was no surprise that the floors had rotted and there was little left but the stone shell. It had clearly been abandoned for many years, but how long it had stood before that was hard to tell.

  The grounds were of course overgrown, although there was enough evidence of formerly careful tending for Henry to wonder what had caused the fall from prosperity. Sheer isolation no doubt had a lot to do with it, and possibly failure of the family line in one way or another; it had happened often enough with rural estates when sons went looking for brighter lights and daughters found no husbands willing to maintain the property.

  The model took some finding but was worth the effort; a great deal of care had evidently gone into its detailed construction, and Henry bent to examine one particular feature more closely. His foot caught in a clump of heather and he lost balance, falling rather heavily and winding himself. Collecting his wits he realised from this new perspective that what he had taken to be a small rock, partly hidden by bracken, was in fact an outlying farmhouse of the model - a good representation of vernacular architecture, dignified in its simplicity ...

  “Are you all right?” came a voice from behind him.

  “Oh, yes, I think so, thank you.” Henry struggled to his feet, finding his right knee to be actually a little painful. Looking round he found a sturdy middle-aged woman with a pair of Labradors that came nosing around, accepting a rub behind the ears.

  “But look, there’s blood on your trousers,” she pointed out.

  “Oh, it’s nothing.”

  “Don’t give me that. It needs attention. Can you still walk?”

  He tried a few steps, uncomfortable but not unduly so. “Right. I live half a mile on. Come along and I’ll patch you up.”

  “I really don’t want to be any trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble. And there’s no call for any heroics. A bit of care now can save a lot of problems later on. I’ll have it done in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  “Good lord!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing really - it’s just that I haven’t heard that expression for years - probably not since my childhood.”

  “One of my grandmother’s,” the woman explained. “I don’t know what brought it to mind just now.”

  Henry’s knee was stiffening, but he managed to walk the half mile without too conspicuous a limp. One of the dogs brought him a stick, which he dutifully threw for it. “Careful - you’ll have a job for life!” warned the woman, who had introduced herself as Anne Cousins and the dogs as Max and Min - the latter being slightly the larger, of course. It occurred to Henry that the job might have its attractions, though he kept that thought to himself. At the cottage Anne bathed and disinfected the rather extensive graze which was still seeping a little, then neatly applied lint and strapping.

  “You’ve done that a few times before, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, I used to be a nurse - though that was years ago. It’s probably why I’m so bossy.”

  “I wouldn’t say that!”

  “Plenty do. Oh, are you cold?”

  “Just an odd shiver.”

  “You’ve probably got a touch of shock. I’ll get some coffee.”

  “You really mustn’t put yourself to any more trouble.”

  “No trouble - I’m having one myself.”

  The coffee duly appeared, along with a plate of shortbread fingers; particularly good, as Henry commented.

  “My grandmother’s recipe.”

  “The lamb’s-tail shaker?”

  “Yes. I never knew the other one.”

  “She seems to have been quite an influence.”

  “She was. My parents did a lot of travelling, so I stayed with her quite often. A wonderful character.”

  “Sounds as though it would have been good to meet her.”

  “A bit late now - although she was still active well into her nineties. But that’s her photograph on the mantel. Taken ages ago, mind you.”

  Henry examined it more closely, and thought there was something familiar about it that he couldn’t quite place. Then he felt he had taken up quite enough of Anne’s time and ought to go. She asked how far he would have to walk, and he pointed out in the guide book where he had left his car.

  “But that’s over three miles away!”

  “An hour’s walk, perhaps a bit more.”

  “All right normally, I dare say, but the situation isn’t normal. I’ll run you there in the car.”

  “That’ll be miles round. I really don’t want to give you so much trouble.”

  “Look, you’ve shown some signs of shock already. That may not be the end of it. If anything happened to you now I’d feel responsible.”

  “There’s really no need ...”

  “Anyway, I’m going to be bossy and insist. So there’s an end to it.”

  Henry accepted the inevitable, quite gratefully in fact since although he wasn’t going to mention it, he did feel a little shaky. The track down to the road was rather rough and Anne warned him to protect the injured knee against knocking on the shelf in front, padded though it was. The route was indeed quite a long way round and Henry fell into a doze before being awakened by the car’s stopping. “Oh, I am sorry - I didn’t mean to be so appallingly rude.”

  Anne laughed. “Don’t worry. My father always had to have a snooze at some time during the day. Any time would do. Probably because he never got to bed before midnight, or so Mum said. Anyway, I suppose that’s your car over there.”

  Henry alighted, disguising the stiffness as best he could. “You’ve been marvello
us, Anne. I really don’t know how to thank you.”

  “No need. It was little enough. Adds some variety to life, though. By the way, when you have a chance, soak that bloodstain in cold water with a little soap or detergent, then rinse it out thoroughly.”

  “Right, thanks for the tip - and for everything else. ‘Bye!”

  He was about to close the door when a thought struck him. “Oh, Anne ...”

  “Yes?”

  “I wondered ...”

  “What?”

  “Would you ... could you dine with me this evening?”

  “Well, I don’t usually ... But yes, why not? Where are you staying?”

  Henry explained. “But it doesn’t have to be there ...”

  “Don’t worry, that will be fine. What time?”

  “They like to have you in the dining room fairly smartish about seven, although there’s a little slack. They can’t serve everyone at once.”

  “Right. So I’ll see you about quarter to?”

  Henry agreed, waved her off and started his own car. Then he realised that he’d got no further with his real errand - not a good start to the week. Still, it was possible that Anne might know something useful about the property he was supposed to be investigating; after all, it must be one of her closest neighbours. Something else was nagging at the back of his mind, but try as he might, he couldn’t think what. What needed more immediate attention was that he was unfamiliar with the etiquette of dating - with a shock, he realised that that was what he was doing - and wondered if he ought to have a little gift for her; a bunch of flowers perhaps. On reflection, he thought it would probably be overdoing things at this stage. This stage? Did that mean he was thinking of pursuing it further?

  This alarming notion was overshadowed by coming unexpectedly upon a sharp bend in the road, and he dismissed it to concentrate belatedly on his driving. It wouldn’t do to smash himself up completely before the evening. Or any other time, he reminded himself. Was he building too much on the prospect suddenly presented to him? Did he really want to? Oh, to hell with it - navigation was quite enough to think about for now.

  The hotel made no difficulties about his inviting a guest for dinner, and produced a respectable meal; not fancy, but good food well prepared, and the wine came at least up to Henry’s standard of appreciation. Anne had disclaimed any knowledge but seemed well satisfied with it. The waitress asked if they would like coffee in the lounge - “It’s all right, sir, that lot who were making such a racket last night have gone somewhere else.”

  Anne agreed, and on the way slyly commented that there was now no excuse for suggesting a tête-à-tête in his room. “Oh - did you ... were you ...?”

  “Don’t worry, Henry, I wasn’t planning to seduce you. Even in this age it would probably raise a few eyebrows here. And I wasn’t accusing you of lecherous intent, either. Though it might be rather flattering if ...”

  “I suppose I’m a bit strait-laced myself.”

  “I thought you might be. No bad thing either. So let’s have our coffee - you can have a brandy or something if you like, but I’m driving - and then I’m going to ask you a favour.”

  “What’s that?”

  “After the coffee!”

  Meanwhile Henry wondered if she knew anything about the model village he had been examining when she found him.

  “I asked about that when I first moved up here, but didn’t get very far. I thought the librarian might help - they tend to go in for local history - but he could only tell me that it was reputed to be of a real place, though no one seemed to know where. It had been made generations ago, of course. Do you have a particular interest?”

  “Nothing I can define. But I’ve a feeling that somehow it isn’t altogether unfamiliar.”

  “Funny you should say that. Granny came on a visit a year or two before she died, and she said something of the sort when I took her to see it. That farmhouse you nearly dived into reminded her of one where she’d lived many years ago. Of course, there’s nothing particularly distinctive about it; there must be hundreds more or less alike around the country.”

  Henry wondered whether to say that her grandmother’s photograph also rang a bell with him, only the waitress came up at that point to ask if they would like anything else to drink, and the moment passed.

  “Now, what’s this mysterious favour you were going to ask?”

  Anne explained that the owner of a large house nearby had recently died and it was apparently about to be put up for sale; a relative living elsewhere had somehow heard about it and was interested for a reason so far unexplained but probably to do with a hotel business, asking her to take a careful look at it and report on its character, facilities and condition. Anne hadn’t been sure that she was up to it, “especially as estate agents never take women seriously” - Henry stifled a protest - and would be grateful for his company on the inspection. A provisional arrangement had been made with the key-holder, for the following day as it happened, but it could be altered if that were inconvenient.

  Henry could hardly believe his good fortune, but yes, the location tallied with what he had been given for his own commission. Feeling a little guilty at what amounted to a minor and necessary deception, he agreed without mentioning his own interest. Anne telephoned to confirm her arrangement, and found a slight complication; would there be any objection if someone else joined them for the visit? None occurred to him, at least none that would be at all plausible, so that was settled. Anne provided directions for collecting her the following morning, then after a few minutes of casual chat said that she had better get back to see to the dogs. Henry escorted her to her car, wondering silently if he had been adequate as a host. “Thank you - I enjoyed that,” although not effusive seemed tolerably reassuring, especially when reinforced by a quick peck on the cheek. “See you tomorrow.”

  In the circumstances Henry half-expected a rosier version of his recurrent dream in one form or another, but instead found himself chasing a banana through the convoluted aisles of a vast supermarket, hampered by a wooden leg and a loose shoe-lace. He never caught it.

  In the morning he duly called for Anne, who navigated him to the house in question. They were a little early, and Henry was able to examine most of the exterior; so far as he could see, it was well maintained, with chimneys recently re-pointed and no obvious decay in the woodwork. He noted a lack of the double glazing that he would have expected in the upland climate, but perhaps there were local restrictions on the character of modernisation. They had to wait only a few minutes more for the key-holder, who told them that there was to be yet another addition to the party - did they mind? Henry shrugged; “The more the merrier” - after all, the less conspicuous his own activities would be.

  Then another car drew up and the driver emerged. To Henry’s surprise it turned out to be Jim Fraser, who also seemed a little taken aback, surreptitiously signalling for silence. A woman with him was presumably the sister he had mentioned. The key-holder explained the new situation, again accepted without demur. The final arrivals proved to be the amorous couple from the hotel, causing Henry to think that coincidence was piling up a bit too thick; what on earth was going on? He recalled a book in which various apparently unconnected characters on a conducted tour proved to be members of a criminal conspiracy gathered in the course of their plot, but it seemed rather far-fetched to suppose that anything of the sort was going on here.

  He managed to have a few words aside with Fraser, who also had been surprised by the appearance of the love-birds. For his part, his editor had been given a hint that something about the place was likely to prove worth investigating, but without any idea of what.

  “Have you found any clues yet?”

  “Not a thing, but I’m taking photographs. They may show up something I haven’t spotted myself.”

  “What sort of thing?”

  “No idea. They may be significant to someone else, though. What’s your interest?”
/>
  “Oh, I’m just accompanying a friend.”

  “You seem to be taking remarkably detailed notes.” But then the others joined them and Henry was spared having to think up a reason on the spur of the moment.

  Back at Anne’s cottage Henry begged paper on which he could transcribe his notes more fully - not to say legibly - and she asked if he fancied an omelette, as she usually had only a light lunch. It suited him well enough. They had barely finished when the telephone rang and Anne answered it. Henry tried not to overhear but couldn’t miss the exclamation of astonishment.

  “Guess what,” said Anne on returning.

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “No, of course not - it was just an expression. That was Mum.”

  “Oh, yes?” - with a rather unconvincing pretence of interest.

  “She’s found something about a model village that she thinks is probably the one over there, but isn’t sure. She thinks I’ll be interested and suggested coming over tomorrow afternoon to check. Can you join us?”

  It was a fortunate coincidence, and of course he could (it was surely too early to worry about any possible significance in “meeting the family”), so thus it was arranged.

  Mum turned out to be a very alert lady of about seventy, clearly related to the portrait on Anne’s mantel. “Have we met somewhere before?” she asked on being introduced, eyeing Henry quizzically.

  “Not as far as I can remember.”

  “Oh well, never mind. At my age practically everyone I meet reminds me of someone else, or I imagine it does. So you’ve been helping Anne with that enquiry of Julia’s, I gather.”

  “The least I could do, after her kindness.”

  “What was that?”

  “Patching me up after I fell and hurt a knee.”

  “Evidently you found the right time and place to do it.”

  Asked if she would like tea before visiting the site or afterwards, Mum opted to get on first with the business in hand. At the model she produced the paper she had found and to her great satisfaction compared the photograph in it with what was unmistakably the reality, then slapped her knee and exclaimed “Got it!”

  “What?”

  “Where I thought I’d seen you before. You remind me of a young lad who used to come to the farm for milk and eggs. His parents spent a summer holiday with him camping in the paddock. Do you remember, Anne?”

  “Sorry, no”

  “No, of course, silly of me. You were only two at the time.”

  Henry was intrigued. “Whereabouts was that?”

  “Over to the east - just outside Kirkby Malzeard.”

  “Extraordinary! My mother used to speak of camping near there for years afterwards. And of the farmer’s kindness.”

  “So it was you!”

  “It looks rather like it. But I lost all memories of that time in an accident. At least I thought it was all of them, only the other night something of it came back to me. And for a while before that I had dreams of the place - but in those it had obviously fallen on hard times.”

  “Why yes; it actually did. We moved to a bigger farm the next year, and the people who took over were - well, not terribly good husbandmen. And there was something else - rumours about a rather disreputable incident. Oh yes, that was it: they were suspected of being involved when a young child disappeared nearby.”

  “Did anything come of it?”

  “I don’t think so. Not enough evidence, most likely.”

  Conversation for the next hour or so hovered around the coincidence of meeting again so long afterwards, then turned to family matters in which Henry had no part so made his excuses to leave. There was no opportunity for making any further arrangements, and Henry realised with something of a pang that there was no real reason to expect any. But an opportunity could probably be made, and he spent the evening mulling over the revelations of past history - and perhaps over rather too many whiskies.

  He had failed to set the alarm and awoke later than intended, with a decidedly muzzy head. It took him a while to realise where he was, and he was still rather confused when he picked up his newspaper, which startled him with a date earlier than he had expected. Then understanding dawned, and he chuckled: quite an extraordinary dream sequence! He winced; he had been lying awkwardly and an old knee injury was decidedly stiff, but a brisk walk to the office would probably loosen it. It also gave him a chance to ponder the plausibility or otherwise of incidents from a forgotten childhood surfacing in dreams. The amnesia was true enough.

  Ted greeted him with a cheerful “Hello, overslept, have you?”

  “Yes, sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter. We aren’t rushed off our feet. But something’s come up.”

  “Oh, what’s that?”

  “I’ve just heard from Anne - “

  Henry was startled. “Anne?”

  “Yes, my cousin in Harrogate. You met her a couple of years ago when she came for a break after her husband died.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. A pleasant woman.”

  “Yes, I thought at the time you seemed mildly interested.”

  “Did I?”

  “But that’s by the way. She’s normally quite sane, but for some reason she’s taken it into her head to fancy buying an old farmhouse up on the moors.”

  “Good lord!”

  “Yes, and she wants me to go and look it over for her.”

  “Er - whereabouts on the moors?”

  “Why? Do you have a particular interest?”

  “No - well, yes, in a way, but it would take a lot of explaining. Another time, perhaps.”

  “I shan’t hold my breath. The point is that I’m a bit tied up now. With Sheila just about to produce a young Edward, or whatever the female equivalent is, I don’t want to be dashing off to the back of beyond.”

  “I don’t think you can reasonably call Harrogate that!”

  “This place is somewhere well outside Ripon. What I’m coming to is, would you mind doing it for me? I think it will just about qualify as a business trip.”

  Henry had an uncomfortable feeling that coincidences were piling up again, and wondered just how far they were likely to go. “All right. When is it to be?”

  “You know women - well, perhaps you don’t. It has to be as soon as possible - this afternoon, if you can make it.”

  “Today!”

  “Yes, it’s just about possible. Go by car so you don’t have to worry about catching trains. Oh, and in case of contingencies, it might be wise to take an overnight bag.”

  “What sort of contingencies do you have in mind?”

  “Not that one! Though on consideration ... But you might get stuck for some reason.”

  “Fair enough. Any special instructions?”

  “Yes; for goodness’ sake try to get some sense into her. She’s got a perfectly good place of her own, in a decent neighbourhood with people she likes around her, and she’s never been one for the solitary life. As for farming ... I really can’t think what’s got into her. See if you can talk her out of it; she might take more notice of you than me. But be honest; she’s bright enough to see if you’re pulling the wool over her eyes.”

  On the way Henry wondered about this Anne. According to Ted, she had been sad at the funeral but not heartbroken; the marriage had been of affection rather than wild romance, with no children. However, Harold had been a sensible, reliable friend and husband - qualities not over-abundant these days - and she would miss him badly. Henry did remember her slightly, and inevitably wondered if the impression might have inspired his dream. However, he wouldn’t have thought it great enough to trigger even the parts he could remember of such an elaborate fantasy. On the other hand, now that he thought of it, the surname unconsciously wished apparently at random on her namesake could have been significant.

  She proved to be a good deal livelier now, and chatted happily over a light lunch, asking about Ted and interested in his impending
parenthood. “And how about you - have you found a wife yet? Or - “ she added, perhaps showing more insight into his character than he would have expected on such brief acquaintance, “ - has a wife found you?”

  He laughed it off, but couldn’t help wondering if there was anything behind the question. She, it seemed, was still completely unattached. She offered coffee, but he thought it best to proceed to business.

  Heading northwards from Harrogate and passing a sign to Fountains Abbey, they got rather lost in a tangle of minor roads and took a while to find the right way. It was late afternoon by the time they found the place. The track up to the farmhouse was rather overgrown but still easily passable. One of the fields had just been ploughed and the birds were making the most of the pickings; the ploughman called a greeting and said to go on up to the house where he would be with them in a minute or two. “So the farm is still worked,” Henry commented.

  “Yes, by a neighbour. It’s only the house itself that’s for sale.”

  “Ted couldn’t understand why you wanted it, when you were so well settled.”

  “Oh, good heavens, didn’t I explain? I’m not thinking of actually living here - not my scene at all. It would simply be for rent as a holiday home.”

  “Phew! He’ll be glad of that!”

  The door opened at a push and they found themselves in the kitchen. Henry would hardly have been surprised to find a motherly woman prepared to dispense milk and eggs, but there was no one. He looked around, fragments of half-recovered memory flitting through his mind, and had he allowed it could easily have convinced himself that this was indeed the place of his childhood holiday - after all, it was in the right area. But that would surely be stretching coincidence beyond all reason.

  The minute or two stretched to ten and Anne suggested that they might as well make use of the time by exploring a little. A corridor led to an open door though which light could be seen streaming into the room beyond. Even so the air was rather chilly, and once inside, Henry tried to close the door against a draught, but it resisted. Anne gasped slightly, and Henry was concerned to see that she had turned deathly pale. “Are you all right, Anne?”

  She had difficulty in speaking and seemed horror-struck. “Oh, Henry ...”

  “What is it?”

  “Let’s get out of here!”

  “Why? Whatever’s the matter?”

  “It’s ... Don’t think me crazy, but I’m sure - I know - that something absolutely dreadful happened in this room. I can feel it.”

  She shivered, shrinking against him, and without conscious thought his hand went protectively round her waist, a gesture he had never ventured with any woman. She didn’t seem to mind, and indeed slipped hers around him as they retreated. He rather liked the sensation.

  Return to Contents

  COMMAND PERFORMANCE

  “Who the hell is Miranda Wayneflete?” called Lucy from the front door.

  “No idea,” I replied (I’m afraid rather brusquely) from the kitchen, amid attempts to change the bulb holder in the ceiling light. It had probably been there since the house was built, the Bakelite had cracked, the screw had welded itself to one of the terminals and I had to cut the wire. That revealed the brittle state of the insulation, maybe just due to local overheating within the holder but the whole length had better be replaced. I had some spare 5-amp flex that would serve and fervently hoped, with little optimism, that the screws in the ceiling rose were still functional, otherwise I could see myself having to change the cable right back to the junction box, assuming that I could get at it which was not at all certain. It was not the moment for obscure questions.

  Lucy came through waving a postcard, from one of the Greek islands by the look of it. It had a fairly conventional greeting (“Having a splendid time - you’d love it here” or something of the sort) but in unusually elegant handwriting and the signature was perfectly clear, more than could be said of the postmark or of the address which was in a different hand. I was nonplussed for a time; the only Waynflete who came to mind was the 15th-century Bishop of Winchester, while I could think of no Miranda at all. Then I peered more closely at the address. “Look, it’s 37, not 57. I’ll take it round when I’ve finished this job.”

  My fears about the wiring proved all too well founded and it was unsafe to leave as it was, so it was evening before I delivered the card to number 37. It had been up for sale for months and only recently occupied by people I hadn’t yet met, so it was a good opportunity to make their acquaintance without intruding.

  The door was opened by a young man in sweater and jeans with a pleasant “Hello?”, but as he spoke a rolled-up sock came sailing over his shoulder and hit me squarely in the face. Too startled for the moment to say anything, I fumbled it and was about to hand it over.

  “Who’s that?” came a feminine voice from behind, whence appeared a girl who on realising the situation was covered in confusion. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to do that at all. It was one of Rob’s dreadful puns ...”

  “Please don’t worry. There’s no harm done. I just brought this card round; it was wrongly delivered to us this morning.”

  “What a way to repay a kindness,” the girl said, almost collapsing in giggles. “Do come in - you can’t stand there on the doorstep.”

  “Well, I ...”

  “I must make amends somehow - won’t you have a cup of tea or something?”

  “Well, I didn’t mean ... But why not? Thank you.”

  That was the start of a fairly close friendship. Rob explained that they’d only just moved in and hadn’t got things properly organised yet, so would I mind having it in the kitchen? Sheila had at least sorted that out. Of course I didn’t mind. They had a couple of stools in there, and Rob fetched a chair from a bedroom.

  Sheila put on the kettle, commented that it was getting dark and switched on the light , which flickered a few times and then went out. “Damn!” said Rob. “It’s always doing that.”

  Mounting a set of kitchen steps he jiggled the bulb which obligingly lit up again - for a few seconds. When he tried again there was a loud bang and everything went out. “Is it a fuse or a circuit breaker?” I asked.

  Rob didn’t know; he hadn’t found it yet. However, as expected, the arrangement was much the same as in my own place and probably over the whole estate. With the main breaker re-set everything in the kitchen started up again except the light. The breaker on that circuit refused to close and there was evidently a persistent short, so for the time being they would have to rely on flashlights or reading lamps.

  Just then there was a knock at the door: Lucy, coming to see why I was taking so long. After introductions Sheila apologised for the state of the lighting and explained what had happened, asking if we knew of a reliable electrician. “Not in the village,” said Lucy. “But we had the same trouble and Reg fixed it. You’ll do it for them, won’t you, dear?”

  Women have been volunteering their menfolk for unwanted jobs ever since the marriage feast of Cana and probably long before, so that came as no surprise to me, and all the youngsters’ objections were overruled. “It’ll have to be tomorrow, though; I’ll need daylight.”

  “Of course.”

  There proved to be a fourth cupful of tea in the pot and Rob fetched another chair; the space was getting pretty crowded but with a bit of shuffling we managed. “You did remember to deliver the card, I hope,” said Lucy. I could see that she was bursting to know about Miranda Wayneflete and that was as close as she dare get to asking.

  Fortunately Sheila needed no prompting and explained that they had been friends at drama school, but Miranda had married money and was off on a Mediterranean cruise. “The Wayneflete touch is a bit of swank. She’s the only Miranda we know and she’d normally sign herself just that. I don’t mind. Actually she’s been very kind; her husband had bought this place to let but he’s let us have it rent-free until we find somewhere more convenient that we can afford.”

  “Dra
ma school. So you’re actors, then?

  “Well, resting at present. Just filling in with whatever jobs we can get.”

  Something stirred at the back of my mind but didn’t gel until the next day. My uncle Ned had inherited a house in a remote northern valley and most years spent much of the summer there; winters were too bleak. He had become friendly with the innkeeper who had a young daughter with a progressive disease that would inevitably be fatal, probably sooner rather than later, and already limited her physical movements severely. She could read and manipulate television controls, but reception was at best patchy, and having read somewhere about “the magic of the theatre” she was longing to see a real live performance.

  Taking her to an actual theatre was out of the question, and Ned had made enquiries about getting a small travelling company to perform in the village hall, but for several plausible reasons they regretfully turned him down. It occurred to me that perhaps our new friends might be prepared to put on a two-hander there. As I said, if not particularly lucrative it would help to keep their hands in, and with transport, food and accommodation all found, the fee would at least be a useful bit of pocket money.

  They looked at each other, clearly interested but doubtful. “We’d have to think about it,” said Sheila, evidently the business manager of the partnership.

  “Of. course. And I’ll have to speak to my uncle. I imagine he’ll expect to pay the going rate, whatever that is. He’ll probably want a fairly short piece to avoid tiring the girl too much.”

  “Sounds reasonable. How old is she, by the way?”

  “About thirteen or fourteen, I believe. And quite bright - that’s what makes it such a tragedy.”

  “It makes it a bit easier, too. I’d imagined someone younger. Any ideas, Rob?”

  “Hmm ... ‘Village wooing’?”

  “Possible ... about an hour ... two short intervals ... two sets ... Is that going to be a problem? What’s the set-up in this hall, Reg?”

  “I’ve never been there. But probably pretty basic.”

  “Then we’d better assume a bare stage. We’ll need a double-sided backcloth and something to support it ... a couple of deckchairs for the ship ... a table to serve as the shop counter ...”

  And so it went on. To cut a long story short, by the end of the evening they had not only accepted the suggestion but seemed quite excited about it. My only worry then was that Uncle Ned might not like it; I could imagine how disappointed they would be. I already knew the play so I could describe it to him, and much to my relief he jumped at the idea.

  I made up a kind of folding screen painted with a ship’s rail against a background of sea and sky on one side and on the other the stacked shelves of a village shop. We could take the deck chairs for the first scene and clutter for the shop could be provided locally. With four people and all this clobber to take besides normal luggage for a weekend, we should obviously need something much bigger than our car to carry it, so I arranged to borrow Bill Mundy’s van and everything seemed set.

  Bill and his wife were away for a week but due back a couple of days before we were to set off. However, the day before that, Lucy (who to my disgust had started dabbling in Twitter) received a tweet that she translated as “Sorry to let you down. Stuck in Sidmouth: sick Transit. Gloria Mundy.” I suspect that the last touch was an embellishment by Lucy herself for Rob’s benefit, but if so it fell flat as he knew no Latin, not even that familiar tag. Anyway, the message was clear. Luckily I was able to hire a van easily enough.

  The journey was quite good, although I was a bit doubtful about some of the roads we had to use. Jack Birtwhistle, the innkeeper, was accommodating Rob and Sheila; Lucy and I were of course staying with Uncle Ned several miles up the valley and much less handy for the hall, but Jack’s wife opened it up and we unloaded the stuff for the play.

  As expected, the facilities were indeed basic, but just about adequate. There was no way of rigging a curtain even if we had one, but if the lights were put out briefly at the end of each scene the cast could disappear into the dressing room for the interval.

  The play went off quite well, and the villagers who came to the performance seemed pleased with it. Young Jenny, the invalid, was evidently delighted although of course very limited in the appreciation she could show. Molly, her mother, assured us that she was utterly thrilled and would have loved to see it again. Hearing this, Rob and Sheila briefly conferred and ran through it again for her benefit.

  A few days after returning home, we had a letter from Molly Birtwhistle thanking us for the treat put on for Jenny and assuring us that it had given her a real lift. It was a pity that we hadn’t thought to record the performance as Jenny would have loved to hear it yet again. That might have been a hint, but I didn’t feel we could impose on Rob and Sheila to make good the omission. Luckily, however, I happened to have a recording made years before by a couple of friends who ran a tiny theatre on Mull, so I sent a copy.

  Five months later we had another letter from Molly; Jenny had passed away in her sleep. She had practically worn out the cassette with playing it over and over again, but it had made a world of difference to her as she no longer fretted over her disabilities.

  She had been well liked in the community and everyone had wished to pay their respects. Enclosed was a photograph of her, lying as it were in state. She was smiling.

  Return to Contents

  UNEASY ASSASSIN

  As a professional eliminator, Olga Vishinskaya had few equals and probably no betters. She would complete her mission efficiently, with a minimum of collateral problems, and to the complete satisfaction of the client. For the target, to whom she felt an almost equal responsibility, she would try to make the end agreeable within the constraints of her own paradoxically strict personal morality. Her view of death was clinical: it was inevitable sooner or later and sometimes, in terms of social hygiene, the sooner the better. She would accept an assignment only if satisfied that it served the common good, but considered it incompetence to cause any unnecessary distress in the execution.

  Her disposal of Martin Barratt was a case in point. In the morning after their meeting he was found dead, and the doctor and police were called in from the nearest town as soon as the snow was sufficiently cleared towards the end of the day. Olga could truthfully say that yes, she had accompanied Martin to his room to discuss the content of a private telephone call, but although he might have had some thoughts of a more intimate acquaintance – to deny it would be unconvincing, not to say unflattering to herself – she believed he was too much the gentleman to press unwelcome attentions on her. In the event he was too tired even to suggest anything of the sort. He was certainly alive and contentedly sleeping when she left him; what happened after that she could not say.

  Lisl Gertner’s account was completely consistent with all this. When Herr Barratt had failed to appear for breakfast she investigated and found him apparently asleep fully clothed in his chair, but actually not breathing. He had been a fairly frequent visitor and on a previous occasion had asked for medical attention: although she was of course unaware of the reason, she had noticed this time a slight difficulty in carrying luggage, perhaps in hindsight due to something more serious than the turbulent weather.

  Schandi Grüber, representing the police, found the body exactly as Frau Gertner had described. If he had thought to wonder whether the cups and coffee pot used that evening might still be available unwashed for examination, he knew Lisl better than to ask.

  The doctor who attended Martin before had found signs of heart disease on that occasion, and this time nothing inconsistent with it. With no wish for gratuitous unpleasantness, he was disinclined to suggest any other cause. The local police authorities, not notably given to officious curiosity, readily accepted his view, and Olga was free to go on her way with only two days’ delay.

  As usual on such occasions she stopped in the next village and visited the church. She would have preferred one of the Orthodox r
ite, but it was a Catholic area and the Latin variety would serve just as well. Inside, she spent a few minutes in prayer before a figure of the Virgin, then lit two candles, one for Martin and one for herself. She had rather liked him, and was glad that nothing in their encounter was of a kind to embarrass him on meeting his maker. Anything else was his own responsibility, but she thought it unlikely to be particularly heinous.

  That thought almost triggered another that did not quite surface. It bothered her all the way to her lunch stop, but the roads after the storm still needed more than usual care and she could spare it little attention. Over the meal, however, it took shape. Her usual targets were little better than vermin who in previous ages would as often as not have faced a well-earned judicial execution, and by despatching them she was performing a valuable service for a society now too effete to do so for itself. That was the gist of the briefing about the Weston gang before her mission, and at the time she had no reason to suppose Martin an exception, although his absence from the gathering of the rest should perhaps have given her a hint. As it was she had found him utterly different from her expectation, and her comforting his last conscious moments had come from the heart, not merely as her self-appointed duty. She had to face the possibility that his association with Weston might have been completely innocent.

  In fact by this time she had all but convinced herself that it was so. However, she suddenly remembered something that Ivanov had told her and contradicted the idea. She had never questioned her superior’s opinion, and disliked doubting it now, but she had to check. The information, he had said, came from Viktor, and she was confident that whoever else in the organisation might make a significant mistake in such matters, he would not. She called him up and was lucky enough to find him available to talk for a few minutes. Without explaining why, she asked if it was true that he had gathered the information on Martin Barratt; yes, he had. Not only that, but when he reported it, he had been very surprised by Ivanov’s extraordinary reluctance to accept that there was nothing at all reprehensible in what could be found.

  This was worrying, and adding to her anxiety she now recalled something that Katya had said after a recent assignment: she had met her target at his office and been astonished to notice on his desk a photograph of a particularly distinctive woman she could have sworn seeing with Ivanov in a restaurant the previous week. Olga had been distracted at the time and paid less attention than perhaps she should, but if Ivanov was beginning to mix his private affairs with legitimate business ...

  An unfamiliar wave of righteous anger suddenly overwhelmed her, anger not only because she had been made to commit what now looked like a dreadful crime in her own eyes regardless of the law’s, but an even greater anger over the injustice to her victim. And perhaps not only to him; he might well have a wife and family.

  She called the inn and asked if Martin’s next of kin was known. As it happened, his passport gave a Mrs. Doris Barratt of his own address as emergency contact, and the police had summoned her to identify the body. Lisl herself had telephoned her condolences, just happening to mention that she could not honestly recommend any of the accommodation near the mortuary, but the Kaiserkrone was within easy driving distance and she would gladly reserve a room if that suited Frau Barratt’s convenience. The visit was to be in two days’ time and of course there would be a room available if Miss Vishinskaya wished to meet the widow. It was not her business to ask why, though she privately wondered.

  Olga spent much of the intervening time searching for some connection between Martin and Ivanov other than through Weston. To justify any irretrievable action she needed more substantial grounds than her present suspicions; she found none, but there was no great hurry.

  Doris Barratt proved to be a skinny, sour-faced creature with an irritating voice and an air suggesting that it would often be raised in strident complaint. She made little attempt to conceal her pitifully unoriginal ideas of what might have passed with her husband on the fatal evening. Olga speculated what life, especially married life, tied to such a woman would have been like, and with a shock recognised a half-wish that she had completed her comforting of Martin with a full-scale seduction; still a virgin, she wondered how well she might have coped.

  Out of courtesy she felt obliged to share a dinner table with Doris, and rather dreaded the prospect. Perhaps a decent bottle of wine would help. Real conversation was still difficult, but as an opening gambit before the main course arrived she mentioned that Frau Gertner had been surprised by Martin’s coming for an appointment with someone who it turned out had not even booked a room. “Oh, that Weston character!” Doris exploded in annoyance. “You could never tell what he was going to do next. I got utterly sick of him.”

  This was promising; Olga refilled Doris’s glass. “Did you know him well?”

  “No, but he seemed to think he could have Martin at his beck and call any time he chose.”

  “In what way?”

  “Every so often he’d phone up, and Martin would have to drop whatever he was doing and do Weston’s bidding.”

  “I suppose he must have had a reason for putting up with it. Do you think it was blackmail or something?”

  “Not exactly, but close. Martin told me that Weston had got his father out of a mess, years ago, and was still trading on it. I did wonder ...”

  “What?”

  “Whether there was another woman involved, but it was always a man’s voice when I took the call.”

  “The same one?”

  “Usually. But now I come to think of it, there once was someone different – a foreigner. Martin wasn’t in, and this character insisted he ring back as soon as possible. He sounded furious. I wasn’t at all sure it was wise to do that, but I had to pass on the message. Martin was pretty cross, too, after they’d spoken. It struck me particularly because he was usually so placid. ‘That bloody Ivanov!’ he said –”

  “Oh?” The interjection came out sharper than she intended.

  Fortunately Doris was too immersed in her own memories to register the suddenly heightened interest. “– and he wasn’t normally one for swearing. I asked what was up. It seems that this Ivanov fellow was connected in some way with Weston, and that was how Martin had met him. I don’t understand these things, but apparently there was a venture going that Martin thought particularly risky but if it worked out would give a good return on a little flutter. Ivanov had ignored the warning and put in more than he could afford to lose, then blamed Martin when it went wrong.”

  So that was it, Olga thought. It seemed to clinch the matter.

  Doris was nervous about driving on the continent and had taken a cab from the town, so in the morning Olga was able to discharge a fraction of her debt to the woman by taking her to the police station specified in her “invitation”. From there she went on to Salzburg where a friend in a Vienna choir was performing that evening. Over coffee after the concert, Annelise commented that Olga seemed unusually subdued.

  “Sorry, I’ve got something on my mind.”

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “Not really, but thanks. I’ve made a frightful mistake. I can’t explain, but there’s no way it can be put right.”

  The conversation fizzled out after that, and Olga returned to her hotel. As a rule she would sleep easily, but the problem she faced kept going round and round in her head, the more so as she tried to banish it. Eventually she gave up and made herself a coffee. She might as well try to work out a plan. She now had a new target, Ivanov himself, and an idea was beginning to take shape.

  He was a persistent womaniser with blatant designs on her virtue, while she had been equally forthright in defending it. If the pretence of succumbing was to succeed she would have to disarm suspicion by weakening gradually, but she was confident of making it convincing enough; she had plenty of practice. Besides, lust was a powerful antidote to caution. He would almost certainly be off his usual guard, and it should not be too difficult.

  The pl
an inevitably meant her own death too, of course, but she regarded it with almost her usual detachment. In a way, it would be welcome: she owed it to Martin.

  With that decided, she slept like a log.

  Return to Contents

  THE LIAR

  I might, like many another author capitalising on his memories, preface this offering with a disclaimer, pointing out that it is a work of fiction and that nothing in it should be taken as referring to real events, places or personages. But if I go further to say that nothing herein is true, does that not apply also to the disclaimer? What then is to be believed? What, as Pontius Pilate famously asked, is truth?

  Put it this way. I may aspire to tell a tale that is completely fictional. But mankind has been around for perhaps a couple of million years, civilisation of some kind for ten or twenty thousand, recognisably modern societies for a few hundred, and there’s no way for any but the most fantastic elements of a story to be without factual precedent some time, somewhere, somehow. Even the most elaborate fantasies probably have recognisable antecedents. After all, there are supposed to be no more than about half a dozen basic plot lines, but don’t expect me to list them.

  Then again, any one of those basic plots can be recited in a few seconds, whereas I hope to hold attention for at least ten minutes, with luck perhaps for an hour, or if inspiration really runs away with me beyond all experience or likelihood, for perhaps a day or two. To do that I must flesh out the bare bones of the story with the organs and muscle to drive the narrative, provide a substantial skin of context to hold together the various components, and to avoid being unutterably prosaic, clothe it with tasteful adornment. The more I add, the more likely - indeed, the more nearly certain - it becomes that conscious or unwitting recollections of past reality will be pressed into service.

  So when I say that nothing hereafter reflects actual fact, don’t believe a word of it.

  Martin Graham was by far the greatest liar I ever knew. He lied habitually, not generally to gain advantage, avoid blame or even save embarrassment to other people, although any of these motives might apply to some extent according to circumstance. In fact his lying seemed not so much a habit as a matter of principle: that the truth was too precious a commodity to be wantonly squandered. He took to an extreme the strictures of Kipling’s Kim on the naivety of a man who “told the truth to strangers.”

  This involved him in a good deal of mental tension. There is no point in a lie that cannot be believed, and sustained credibility demands more than superficial consistency. To maintain a life of complete falsehood that fits together even within itself, let alone avoiding obvious clashes with known reality, is very much more difficult than telling the truth - fortunately for criminal investigators and writers of farce. It also makes any kind of social life impossible, since no appointment can be kept, no promise fulfilled, no interaction with the mechanisms of state or commerce taken to fruition.

  Hence came the greatest lie of all. Martin was not the name given by his parents, nor were they called Graham. Rather like Jekyll and Hyde, though without the gothic overtones, he had a completely genuine name and persona in which he lived a normal life: normal, that is, except for concealing his dual identity and in other respects maintaining an almost obsessive truthfulness. It was as though he had shed all tendencies towards mendacity on to his alter ego. Martin, as a flight of fancy, occupied only a small and manageable portion of his existence, and was kept completely distinct from the rest. He would have been Oscar Wilde’s ideal Bunburyist.

  I knew none of this at the time, of course. Our first meeting was at a hotel some hundred and twenty miles away across country from my home, too far to be sure of arriving there on time for the start of a conference if I were to set off at a tolerable hour that morning. Other participants had to travel further, and we all agreed to stay there the night before and have a fairly late dinner together. We tried that evening to avoid talking shop beyond the bare essentials, but one point of procedure needed to be settled and after the meal Huw Evans went out to his car to get some relevant papers while the rest of us adjourned to the bar lounge. The parking area was poorly lit, but through the window I saw him exchange a few words with a stranger.

  On his return he commented on having bumped into a former pupil of his old school, who purportedly remembered following him a couple of years behind. The recollection was one-sided but there was nothing unusual about that, since in any school interest in personalities tends to be directed upwards rather than downwards, so no one was inclined to question the claim. As a natural courtesy Huw had invited the man to join our party. Some of us had uneasy visions of the evening descending into an Old Boys’ duologue, but we needn’t have worried. Martin proved to have a fund of stories ranging from the plausible to the outrageous that kept us entertained for rather longer than we really should have continued, until someone remembered that the barman lived out and ought to be allowed home.

  The next morning not all the party turned up for breakfast, and there were some bleary eyes among those who did, but Martin was disconcertingly perky. He made the round of the more fully awakened among us, wishing farewell and a good meeting, then disappeared. There was no reason to expect any occasion for coming across him again. I suddenly realised that owing to the distraction we still hadn’t settled the matter for which Huw had brought in the papers, and suggested to him that those of us who were more or less capable of it had better do so promptly while the rest nursed their hangovers, in the hope that they would agree afterwards. It was the sort of question for which any reasonable answer is better than continuing to argue, and when ours was put to the less abstemious it was accepted with little demur.

  At that time my path crossed Huw’s two or three times a year, and some months later he told me that he had been dragooned into acting as a trustee for his school, and as an unwelcome consequence was landed with a load of raffle tickets to sell for the development fund. A generous prize (a quite respectable car, even by his high standards) had been donated and the tickets were correspondingly expensive, so he would understand if I didn’t want to subscribe, but I had been sounding off about the need to support good educational establishments and felt unable to refuse. He went on to say that the gift had been anonymous, but the school secretary had done a bit of detective work and traced it back to - guess who? I had no idea. Apparently it was Martin Graham.

  There was some mystery about this. The records for the year in question held no mention of his having been admitted to the school, but had been damaged in a fire and might conceivably be incomplete. Had that been all, such an explanation would have been readily accepted, but more strangely, none of the supposed contemporaries who could be contacted had any memory of the name. However, everything connected with the purchase and delivery of the prize appeared to be completely in order; he was not angling for any benefit from his supposed attendance (indeed, quite the reverse); no one could think of any other motive for an imposture, and the situation remained baffling.

  It also put the school authorities into something of a quandary. A prize of that nature and value could hardly be handed over like a cake at the church fair; the draw ought to be the climax of some substantial ceremony on the school’s Open Day, with visiting dignitaries and the local Press if not national representatives invited. The obvious person to present the prize would be the donor himself, but for his evident wish to remain unidentified. At that stage, of course, none of us realised that he was using a pseudonym. In the end it was a toss-up between the headmaster and the chairman of the governors, and the Head won - or lost, according to how you regard it. Whichever way, he landed the task. Huw suspected some surreptitious manipulation, as the chairman was a notoriously long-winded speaker inclined to pomposity.

  Although there was no need for me to attend for the draw as the winner would be notified in any case, one of my more affluent relatives was interested in the school for his own reasons and asked me to take a look as he was otherwise committed
for that day; in retrospect I’m not at all sure that any of my observations were ever of much use to him, but that’s another matter. Since I was there, I took the opportunity to take a good look at the prize, and found myself talking to the dealer who had supplied it and come along ostensibly to get necessary details for the subsequent paperwork. He naturally took the opportunity to show off all the good points of the car in the hope of another sale, and having seen the programme for the day was surprised that the presentation was not to be by the donor.

  I told him that the gift was supposed to be anonymous, which he accepted as a valid reason, but he went on to comment that he’d bumped into the man among the guests; at least, he had thought it was he but had been met with a stark denial. He had a good memory for faces - as he said, it was quite important in his business - and could have sworn that he wasn’t mistaken, but supposed it was just possible for two near-identical people to be involved with the same occasion. At that point his attention was taken by another prospect and the conversation ended.

  The circumstances were intriguing enough for me to look out for Martin, or whoever it was, and I eventually spotted him entering the refreshment tent. Inside, I saw him standing by himself with a drink and plate of something or other, and getting into a position with a clear view of him but out of his line of sight, called “Martin!”. There was just enough reaction, promptly suppressed, to constitute a kind of acknowledgement, so I approached and said “Martin Graham, isn’t it? We met in Ludlow last March.” He politely denied it, as expected, so I made the usual apologies and withdrew. It was not the right time or place to take issue with him, but I made a point of noting where he went afterwards and waited for a more favourable opportunity.

  A little later the headmaster came on the PA system and announced the start of the raffle. There was a good deal more than the car to be won: Huw had mentioned that some of the regular donors evidently regarded their offerings as competitive status symbols, and while they couldn’t, or at least wouldn’t, attempt to outdo Martin’s, they had certainly upped their stakes from previous occasions. From the examples he gave – one was a weekend for two, no questions asked, at a particularly luxurious country house hotel - I could see what he meant.

  It didn’t start at that level, of course, but with relative trifles like a case of Moet & Chandon or a restaurant dinner. The Head was evidently a bit of a showman and played each draw with all the histrionics it could take, so it was over half an hour before he reached the climax. The car was then driven to the front of the stand by the dealer’s very pretty assistant, who the Head was at pains to point out did not come as part of the fittings, but she certainly added plenty to the interest.

  There was a good deal of razzmatazz before the ticket was actually drawn, but dead silence as the previous winner thoroughly stirred up the counterfoils and passed one to the Head to be unfolded. He pretended to fumble with it for a few seconds, then slowly read out “Number ... one hundred ... and ... sixty ... six.” Dead silence again. “Come on, now; someone must have it. Number one hundred and sixty six.” Still no answer. People started looking around, as they do on such occasions, and I was no exception. My glance chanced to fall on the man I had taken for Martin, and I was struck by the look of utter horror on his face as he gazed at his ticket.

  He seemed to be in a state of shock, until his neighbour, looking over his shoulder, tapped him on it and pointed to the ticket. Then he seemed to come part-way out of his trance, went forward and with extraordinary diffidence claimed the prize, which was announced to the customary applause to have been won by Mr. Gareth Carpenter. Accepting the obligatory kiss from the pretty assistant with a lack of enthusiasm that can’t have done anything for her self-esteem, he seemed from what could be heard over the PA system to be saying that he had come alone in his own car and would make arrangements to collect the prize later. The dealer took his particulars for the log book, and Carpenter made his way towards the refreshment tent, presumably with the idea of getting something to steady his nerves.

  Evidently there were good grounds for such an idea, as he still seemed to be rather dazed. For some reason I felt concerned for him and thought I ought to apologise for my previous blunder, so I made my way towards him. I’d almost caught up near the entrance when he tripped over a guy rope, fell heavily and cracked his head on a tent peg, causing quite a nasty gash. He looked pretty groggy as he tried to stand up, and people rushed to help while someone phoned for an ambulance. A chair was fetched from the tent and he was guided on to it, with various ladies fussing over him; I suppose one or two might have had an idea of getting a ride in the prize car and perhaps something afterwards, but for the most part it was probably genuine solicitude.

  The ambulance arrived quite quickly and a paramedic smartly patched up the wound, but was afraid of underlying damage and thought the patient should go to A&E. At that moment his own phone rang, and the call evidently shook him. “There’s been a bad smash on the motorway with dozens hurt and they need all the ambulances they can get. Can someone take this fellow to the hospital?” There were no other offers, I had no particular commitments and so volunteered.

  Carpenter seemed to get worse on the way and it was as much as I could do to help him to Reception, where he was evidently in no state to answer questions. When the clerk asked me for his personal details all I could say was that the name was probably Gareth Carpenter but I wasn’t sure. “You’re not a relative, then?”

  “No, just a casual acquaintance. He must have some identification on him, though – a driving licence, at least, I imagine.”

  “I don’t like going through his pockets – would you mind ...”

  “Of course not. You can witness that I’m doing nothing improper.”

  Fortunately a diary confirmed the name and even had the address and phone number of an emergency contact. “But that’s over two hundred miles away. And we’re short-staffed and with this horrendous motorway accident ... It’s thoroughly irregular but he needs to have someone with him ... If we get him into a ward would you mind staying for a while?”

  “Well – if needs must ....”

  A medic hastily checked the injury with an indrawn breath, tut-tutted a bit and told a nurse to renew the dressings, then both had to dash off and I was left alone with Carpenter. He still seemed in a daze, but after a few minutes he appeared to come more nearly to himself, looked at me for a few moments with a puzzled expression, then his face cleared. “Oh, it’s you. I couldn’t remember ... It’s very good of you to do this ...”

  “Well, someone had to, and I was nearest.”

  “Thanks, anyway. I don’t really know what came over me.”

  “Whatever it was, it had something to do with winning the raffle.”

  “That damned raffle! It seemed such a good idea at the time. I should have known it wouldn’t work.”

  “What wouldn’t work?”

  “Oh, it’s a long story.”

  “It looks as though we’ll have time for it. There’s been a dreadful smash on the motorway, I gather, and that takes priority.”

  “I see. Now ... I wonder ...”

  “Yes?”

  “Since we’re stuck here, could I ask another favour?”

  “No harm in asking.”

  “You see, I’ve a feeling I may be on the way out – no, don’t come out with the usual platitudes, I could be completely wrong but this is just in case. There are a few people I owe explanations to, and I’d be grateful if you’d get in touch with them if it turns out that I can’t.”

  He gave me half a dozen names and addresses; luckily I always carry a notebook, as one of my hobbies is writing stories and ideas sometimes come to me when I can do no more than jot down the outline before I forget.

  “Right. You needn’t give the whole tale to everyone; just use your judgement. To start with, you were quite right in thinking you met me as Martin Graham in Ludlow. I’m sorry to have tried to put you off; it’s part of a long history o
f deception going right back to my school days.”

  Apparently he had belonged to a dramatic society in which one of the more imaginative members used to write his own plays, usually fairly garish blood-and-thunder efforts almost in the Jacobean tradition. One of them revolved around an obsession with the occult, and Carpenter was given a part that involved officiating at a Black Mass. Coming from a religious background he objected, but Fletcher (that was the author’s name – I wondered later if it might be significant) insisted that it was only a play and didn’t count. Carpenter wasn’t entirely convinced, but went along with it for the time being, until at the first rehearsal of that scene he found he couldn’t bring himself to utter the words.

  No amount of persuasion could shift him, since it was the capability as much as the will that was lacking. Fletcher had let it pass for the time being, suspecting that however contemptuous the others might pretend to be about it, any alternative casting would run into the same difficulty; if the worst came to the worst he could scrap that scene and get round its narrative function in some other way, although with serious loss of dramatic impact. However, before that became necessary, he hit on the idea of giving Carpenter a stage name, and so Martin Graham came into a rather nebulous existence; it wouldn’t be Carpenter, but Martin, speaking the dreadful formulae of allegiance to Satan.

  Crude though the stratagem might seem, it worked; Carpenter, as Martin, continued in the part and played it well. Performed as a Parents’ Day function, the play attracted a storm of criticism from some and extravagant praise from others, both based on habitual positions of principle rather than artistic flaws or merits in the work itself, as Fletcher himself recognised. Realistic about his own talents, he went on in later life to become a successful director of other writers’ works, especially in dealing with notoriously “difficult” performers.

  That is by the way. Carpenter, looking back over his conduct to date some years afterwards, realised that aspects of it sat uncomfortably with his generally high principles, and to ease his conscience started almost without thinking of it to ascribe his defaults to Martin rather than to his real persona. He soon recognised what he was doing and abandoned that approach in its crude form, instead playing a kind of game in making Martin a model of mendacity while the real Carpenter stuck more or less faithfully to the truth and other virtues. He now saw that in some instances his tricks had caused real difficulty for other people; mostly he had been able to make it up somehow without giving the game away, but in the half-dozen he had listed for me it had not been possible and he would like me to give them his explanation and an apology.

  Meanwhile his career had prospered modestly and he had a little spare money looking for useful occupation, preferably providing amusement if not a profit. A friend in the stock-broking business had suggested speculating in the commodities market, and he toyed with the idea for a while, but felt a little uneasy about gambling on other people’s misjudgements. Nevertheless he felt an attraction to it and eventually yielded to the temptation, but only in the name of Martin. He was well aware of being just as likely to lose as to gain by his transactions, but in the circumstances it didn’t matter so long as the sums were not too great. In the event that didn’t happen and he put down the string of early successes to a surprising but not impossible run of good luck. As it continued increasingly beyond statistical probability he began to worry that there was something seriously untoward behind it, and he determined that “Martin’s” funds should be kept strictly apart from Carpenter’s. There were plenty of worthy organisations very willing to relieve his embarrassment over the recurring surpluses.

  However, there came a time a few years back when his real business fell into difficulties, and he had to use some of the Martin fund to get out of them. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, from then onward the profits rose sharply, and Carpenter began to fear that his whole life might have become contaminated by the infusion. In the hope of clearing the infection, he resolved after months of agonising to divest himself of the Martin account and everything connected with it, partly by paying in that name for the exceptionally expensive prize in the school raffle. When he realised that he himself had won it, the fear became a certainty; hence the state of shock in which he had fallen over the guy rope.

  At that point of the narrative he fell into a kind of convulsion, but while apparently in agony he somehow got out a plea to take hold of his hand which was flailing around like a loose rope in a gale. I didn’t see the point and hesitated, but he begged again and after a few failures I managed to get hold of it. It seemed to calm him a little; gradually the convulsions subsided, and he sank back on the pillow with an expression that I read as resigned acceptance, and then, quite suddenly with a sigh of relief, actual peace. So it remained until the nurse returned, checked, and closed the eyelids.

  I never heard what happened afterwards, but presumably the hospital authorities would have taken up the emergency contact to make arrangements for dealing with Carpenter’s material affairs. I had my own commission. Two people on the list had evidently moved and no one knew where, but the others I was able to meet. One of them gave me the description of Martin’s character at the start of this account. In general the trouble his lies had caused had been significant but not disastrous, for instance a matrimonial dispute that threatened to end in divorce but was amicably settled when misunderstandings were cleared up after a few months, and a broken engagement that in hindsight would probably have been more than regrettable had it actually been fulfilled. They were now “water under the bridge” and the people concerned took the news of his death as a cause for apparently genuine regret.

  I then had to deal with problems that suddenly arose in my own business. At first I thought them desperate, but on closer examination they didn’t seem quite so insuperable and with a year’s hard work it was back into profitability. In fact it started to do rather better than before, and I was able with a clear conscience to take a real holiday for the first time in years.

  A fellow guest at the hotel, with whom I happened to get into conversation, mentioned that he had started a publishing business as a loss-maker for tax purposes, so I told him about my stories that no one else would even look at. It was a rather humiliating ploy, but if it worked, better than not getting them out at all. He took them unseen, splashed out he hoped ruinously on publicity, and probably for that reason alone they sold like hot cakes, making a handsome profit; he wasn’t too pleased. Still, his next venture was an anthology of modern verse that got rave reviews from the critics and was very gratifyingly remaindered after selling less than a hundred copies. When I offered him my draft of a novel, written long before in my days of relative leisure, he turned it down flat, but another firm whose boss had liked my stories took it on and for the past three months it’s been doing quite nicely, thank you very much.

  Then yesterday I bumped into Julia Hitchins, about whom I’ve secretly fantasised for years despite her total indifference, and she startled me by asking if she could come tonight for advice on how to deal with a personal difficulty. Thinking of Martin, I’m rather worried about it.

  I don’t really see why I should be. After all, the whole thing is pure fiction – isn’t it?

  Return to Contents

  A FISHY BUSINESS

  The invitation to join the Frenish Islands expedition came as a total surprise, and no one else on it could give a convincing explanation; the most plausible was a mistake for one of my countless namesakes, a blunder too embarrassing to be acknowledged. Be that as it may, I found myself that summer as a kind of general assistant (i.e. an extra pair of hands) to John Hotchkiss in the survey of coastal life. We were working our way along a rocky shelf when he came across a rather unusual structure – a sort of natural well-shaft that despite the clarity of the water went down out of sight. There’s probably a technical term for it, but if I ever knew one I don’t remember. I’d lagged a few yards behind and he called me to catch up.

  “Look a
t his,” he said. “You see that projecting rock on the left about ten feet down – lurking beside it there’s a creature I’ve never come across before. If I can catch it, will you be ready to rush it back to Trudi?”

  Trudi Stevenson was our marine biologist, reputedly on the way up professionally, and sure to take an interest in any new species of whatever it was. She was no doubt brilliant in her field, but not altogether an easy colleague. I’d run foul of her quite early in the expedition, when she returned from some errand to find me turning pages of a book left open on the packing case that passed for her workbench; she was as intolerant of liberties taken with her property as with her person. After the tongue-lashing I got from her on that occasion, I took extra care to give no further offence, although I later found that while her tempers were fierce, they passed quickly and without residue.

  When I took her the new specimen, she was as usual wearing an oversize sweater and baggy jeans that left everything to the imagination, and I dreaded to think how she might have reacted had she known of the one accidental glimpse I’d once caught of her in her skin. I daren’t even try to explain how that came about, highly embarrassing though completely innocent as it was, but she was simply gorgeous, and the memory still leaves me breathless whenever I think of it.

  Trying not to think of something is self-defeating, so I abandoned the attempt and blamed the puffing on haste in my errand. “You’re out of condition,” she said, in quite a friendly manner. “You ought to take more exercise.”

  No doubt she was right, but the kind of exercise that immediately leapt to mind only made the breathlessness worse. I simply handed over the find with a comment that John thought she’d find it interesting. “Ah yes,” she said. “Looks like some kind of …”

  I shan’t try to reproduce the string of cod-Latin that followed, or the list of peculiar anatomical features. No doubt it would have meant something to anyone less ignorant; she wasn’t one to show off with a bluff, and in any case had no need since no one doubted her expertise. In retrospect I should have asked her to explain, as she would probably have done quite willingly and without obvious impatience, but that didn’t occur to me until it was too late. I just said “Oh, good,” and returned to my duties.

  According to Shakespeare, lust in action is “the expense of spirit in a waste of shame,” and hardly better unacted. That sonnet surely can’t have been just a casual observation, and I sometimes wonder what could have led him to such a depth of self-disgust. Happier is the chap who, asked if he suffered from lustful thoughts, denied it: he rather enjoyed them. Perhaps the difference is between light-hearted fancies and an obsession. Anyway, my attention was not entirely on the work for the rest of the day, and once or twice John had to call me back from a daydream. Judging by his sly grin, he probably guessed why. Trudi had much the same effect on most of the males in the party, probably through sheer personality as much as anything, but to her credit never played on it. Indeed, I doubt if she was aware of it.

  Nothing else of particular note turned up that day, just minor variants of familiar species, and the rest of the trip was much the same. However, that was as had been expected, and the one glorious exception was a bonus. In time it made a useful section in Trudi’s doctoral thesis and a paper in some learned journal, of which she sent copies to all the team with thanks for our help and a generous acknowledgement in the text.

  About five years later I was working as a studio manager for the BBC Overseas Service, and one day during a break I was grabbed by a frantic producer who needed a replacement in a hurry for one who had stormed out after a fierce altercation with a speaker. The programme was about the need to make provision for wild life in developing countries, and the man had made disparaging remarks about people opposing improvements to the lot of the human population for the sake of a few wretched monkeys or whatever they were. One of the panel had unfortunately overheard him and flown into a rage with decidedly intemperate comments, hence the problem.

  Once recording was complete to the producer’s satisfaction, he was about to take the speakers for lunch at some fancy restaurant (I heard later that he was trying to interest them in a more ambitious project), but the now contrite precipitator of the contretemps wanted to apologise for spoiling my break. To my amazement – she had been seated with her back to me during the discussion - it turned out to be Trudi, now introduced as Dr. Stevenson working with the Marine Biological Association as I already knew from the prelude to the discussion. She didn’t recognise me, of course, and it wasn’t for me to claim previous acquaintance, but I appreciated the gesture.

  Then the phone rang for her, evidently with an unwelcome message. She apologised to the producer for having to duck out of his lunch party, as her next appointment had been brought forward an hour and she wouldn’t have time. After they’d gone she asked if I knew where she might get a quick meal instead.

  At that time the staff restaurant in Bush House put on quite a decent menu so I took her there, and she insisted on paying for my lunch which I found a little embarrassing. During the meal I noticed her glancing at me occasionally with a slight frown, and asked if something was worrying her.

  “Not exactly worrying. I have a feeling of having met you somewhere before. Could that be possible?”

  “I’m surprised you remember. Frenish Islands expedition, five years back. Thanks for sending the copy of your paper, by the way, though I can’t claim to have understood the technicalities.”

  “That’s it! You’re the chap I bawled out for fiddling with my notebook. It’s a bit late to apologise, but …”

  “No need. I should have known better.”

  “I really must learn to control my temper. I thought I had done since then, but ... Oh, well.”

  “It didn’t do me any harm. And you were perfectly civil for the rest of the time.”

  “That’s something. Now I think of it, you puzzled me. I wondered how you came to be on the expedition; you didn’t seem to fit in with the others.”

  “A fish in the wrong water?”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “I wondered myself. The invitation came quite out of the blue, and I had a feeling that it might really have been meant for someone else. But there was no telling who, and I wasn’t going to throw up the chance!”

  “I should think not, indeed. But I believe you must be right: there was a fair amount of other correspondence before the invitation. Not all of it might have gone to everyone, but the request to confirm availability certainly would.”

  “It would have to, I suppose.”

  “Yes. I wonder who was really intended. Look, I’ll make some inquiries, and if you’ll give me your contact details I’ll let you know what comes of them.”

  “You really don’t need to take so much trouble.”

  “Of course I don’t need to, but it’s a little mystery I’d like to clear up, and if I succeed you may as well have the result.”

  Three weeks later there was a call from her. “I thought you’d like to know I’ve made a little progress on our mystery.”

  “Oh, yes?” Calling it “our” mystery raised my spirits a notch for some reason, though that didn’t register until later.

  “I’ve been digging into my archives. A Professor Hargreaves was very anxious to get his nephew on to the expedition, even though the team was supposedly complete, but when the list was published there were objections on the grounds that he had no relevant qualifications. At least that was the front story, but I’ve been talking to John Hotchkiss and apparently there were more serious reasons: he had a reputation for misconduct with girls, sometimes practically rape. No way of proving it, of course.”

  “Nasty.”

  “Yes, but it wouldn’t do to offend Hargreaves; he was on various influential committees including one for allocating research funds – as usual in short supply. John thinks there may have been a deliberate ‘administrative error’ so that you got the invitation instead.”

  “Why me?�
�

  “Who knows? Next entry in a database, perhaps?”

  “Sounds as likely as anything. Didn’t Hargreaves complain?”

  “Apparently not, and that leaves an even bigger mystery. Do you have access to records of the BBC’s past broadcasts?”

  “No, but I know someone who has. Why?”

  “Hargreaves seems to have dropped out of sight; he used to do quite a lot of work for them, but not for some time. Could you find out when he was last on?”

  “Maybe. What was his subject?”

  “Er … Damn, I’ve forgotten. I’ll look it up and come back to you. Is that all right?”

  “Yes, of course. Oh, one other thing.”

  “Yes?

  “Have you checked obituary lists?”

  “Yes, and he isn’t in them. And he was prominent enough for that to be significant.”

  It was only after she’d rung off that I thought of another interesting question: why had Hargreaves been so keen to get his nephew on that expedition in the first place?

  Duly primed with a bottle of Scotch, Dick Saunders came up with the records of Hargreaves’s appearances, which were far from regular but had averaged two or three a year, with the last some five and a half years before. I wondered if as a bonus he could find out who had been the producer on that occasion. “No problem. It was Jimmy Cartwright.”

  “You’ve a good memory!”

  “Not particularly. It always was.”

  “Is he still around?”

  “No, he retired to somewhere in Kent about eighteen months ago. A bit young, but he was having serious memory problems. They’re probably worse by now, so be warned.”

  “Damn!”

  “Still, if it’s any help, he was particularly friendly with Dot Summers, and I think they’re still in touch. She probably has an address.”

  “Could you get it?”

  “Nothing to do with debt collecting, is it?”

  “No, but it’s just possible he may have a lead about something odd that happened to me five years ago …”

  “Not unpleasant, I hope.”

  “Far from it!”

  “In that case, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Three days later, he came up with not an address but a telephone number, and the useful information that Cartwright favoured Glenfarclas whisky, preferably 105 proof. Duly armed, I made an appointment, got directions and set off on my next available free day.

  When I explained the reason, Cartright apologised and doubted whether he could really help all that much, as his memory was exceedingly erratic, liable to come and go without warning. He did remember, though, that his monopoly of producing programmes involving Hargreaves was because no one else could stand him, or rather stand his impossible demands for changes to the programme format or panel members.

  “He was a difficult character, then?”

  “That’s putting it mildly. But I usually managed to convince him that what we could provide was what he really wanted anyway, so he could accept it without losing face.”

  “How long had you been working with him?”

  “I rather lost track of it, but it must have been at least ten or fifteen years. We got quite friendly in a way; I think he felt I was distant enough for him to get things off his chest that would be too embarrassing with anyone closer.”

  “I believe he broadcast several times a year.”

  “Yes. It wasn’t a regular series, but he was generally called in when his particular subject came up.”

  “He was the best in the field?”

  “I doubt it – though I wasn’t qualified to judge. No, as far as I can remember, it was mainly because he could be guaranteed to disagree with practically everyone else and so made for a lively discussion. It was quite a blow when the Beeb lost interest in him.”

  “Why did they?”

  “I thought at the time he must have offended one person too many or too seriously higher up. There were plenty to choose from. But actually there was some other reason – I forget what.”

  “Did he ever mention a nephew? I do have a particular reason for asking.”

  “What’s that? – if it isn’t private, of course.”

  “Not at all. It seems likely that he was intended to have a place on an expedition that I got by mistake.”

  “That rings a bell. There was something a bit scurrilous about it – now what was it? Damned if I can remember. Tricky thing, memory; some quite important things vanish completely, trivialities stick like glue – especially the ones you’d rather forget. But I’ve probably told you that. Perhaps it’ll come back if we go on; they sometimes do, for no obvious reason. Maybe another tot of that excellent whisky will help. Sure you won’t join me? As you wish – all the more for me. Now what sort of expedition was it?”

  “A survey of flora and fauna on the Frenish Islands.”

  “Hmm. Doesn’t help, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh. What was Hargreaves’s subject?”

  “Anthropology, I think. Yes, that’s right; he was supposed to be a particular authority on the marital customs of various tribes in a rain forest somewhere or other. Hm – his own would have made quite an interesting study, by all accounts.”

  “Oh?”

  “He’d just got rid of number four, and said he was hoping for a bit of peace and quiet for a while. Then … Ah, yes!”

  “What?”

  “It’s coming back to me, bits of it at any rate. He’d got some floosie in the family way, and she was insisting on marriage or there’d be a hell of a scandal. Why particularly, after all that had gone before, goodness only … Oh yes, I remember, she was already supposed to be marrying his nephew.”

  “Tricky.”

  “Yes, and young Vincent wasn’t likely to take it calmly. Not a nice man at all, I believe.”

  “Couldn’t the child have been his?”

  “Apparently not. Don’t ask me why. In any case Hargreaves was a far better catch, of course, so she was quite ready to ditch Vincent without actually telling him. So everything was arranged very quietly, with the actual ceremony to be while he was well out of the way on a jaunt that Hargreaves had wangled for him. Only unbeknown to him the wangle fell through, Vincent realised that something was up, eventually got wind of what was happening and turned up at the registry office just after the knot was tied. A very nasty scene, I believe, though somehow it was kept out of the tabloids. Still, Hargreaves evidently thought it best to disappear, probably for fear of Vincent as much as of the Press.”

  “How do you know about it, then?”

  “He kept sending me Christmas cards from – oh, somewhere abroad - with snippets of news, until I retired. For all I know he may still do, only of course he won’t have my address. I was rather surprised; the marriage actually seemed to be turning out fairly well, considering.”

  With my own question answered I nevertheless couldn’t leave Cartwright flat, so listened with (I hope!) a tolerable pretence of interest to a stream of gradually returning but rather repetitious reminiscences until I could reasonably excuse myself to catch a train.

  Back home, I phoned Trudi. The call wasn’t answered, and I remembered she was going to stay for a few days with her family in Watford. Luckily she’d given me the number, but I was beginning to think myself out of luck by the time an unfamiliar voice responded and I could ask for Trudi. There was a babble of conversation in the background, and when she came on she explained that she would have to be quick as her mother was just about to serve a meal. However, they were all as intrigued as she was by the Hargreaves business and would love to hear the full story; could I come for lunch the next day or the one after? Of course I jumped at the invitation.

  All that was a good quarter-century ago; it’s amazing how time vanishes. On the whole, despite ups and downs of no great interest to others, life has been as good as we could reasonably expect. We still remember the Frenish expedition as a high point, though; it was about this time of year, and we have a so
rt of anniversary dinner. This time the Hotchkisses are coming to us, and I promised my wife to get some things in. Actually John suggested for once we should go to a restaurant to give Anna a break, but as always she insists that she prefers her own cooking. It’s certainly at least as good as in any eatery I know in the district, and the portions are better. That’s the one talent in which she excels, and she knows it. Luckily she isn’t the type to be jealous of her more variously gifted sister; although well into her fifties now, Trudi is still as gorgeous as ever.

  Return to Contents

  A WINDOW ON THE SOUL

  “What a gorgeous picture!”

  “Not bad, is it?” John Hardcastle paused for a while in manipulating the latest batch copied from his camera and joined his wife in admiring this particular image on the computer screen, trying to avoid looking intolerably smug but not succeeding very well. “Ready to move on?”

  “No, hang on a bit.”

  Sandra gazed at the screen for what seemed an age, then relaxed with a contented sigh and lapsed into an unwonted silence.

  “Are you all right, dear?”

  “What?”

  “I said, are you all right?”

  “Oh, yes, John, I’m sorry. I was miles away.”

  “Where?”

  “Goodness knows. But it was really good. I had a marvellous feeling that all was well, and all manner of things were well ... Heavens, I never thought I’d find myself quoting Julian of Norwich.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, never mind.”

  “Don’t leave me in suspense!”

  “All right. A mediaeval mystic – I read about her years ago. But you know how anxious I was about Mother ...”

  “I told you there was no need to worry. It’s a perfectly standard operation.”

  “Yes, but there’s always the ‘What if ...?’, isn’t there? But suddenly it seemed that everything was bound to be all right, and the relief was incredible.”

  “Well, that’s something to be thankful for. Can I move on now?”

  John continued his task, with particular attention to possible entries in the club’s monthly competition, but nothing that altogether fitted the specification really satisfied him. He kept coming back to the one that had so fascinated Sandra, and eventually decided that if he was to enter anything at all, that had to be it. He needed a title and after racking his brains without success, asked her for ideas.

  “Does it have to be descriptive?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Then how about ‘Juliana’?”

  “Why that?”

  “Because of it making me think of Julian. It’s only a label, after all.”

  “Well, I suppose, why not?”

  The club’s practice was to attach all entries for the competition to a special page on its web site a week before the judging, with an invitation to comment, and during that time several favourable remarks were posted, though generally with some reservations about eligibility. The judge evidently shared them. About a fortnight later, however, John was surprised by a message from a Dr. Julius Norstein of Serenethica Limited, whatever that might be, suggesting a meeting with particular reference to “Juliana” and giving a telephone number to arrange details.

  “What on earth can that be about?” wondered Sandra.

  “Only one way to find out,” so John rang the number. After a couple of failed attempts, he got through, and Norstein explained himself to be an experimental psychologist based some distance away, but very willing to travel.

  He proved to be a little American bubbling over with energy, in fact something of a whirlwind, and after the introductions got quickly down to explaining his business. With increasing levels of stress and anxiety among Health Service patients – no, not just brought on by the service itself! – the cost of tranquillisers had become alarming and managers were looking for alternative treatments, especially since there were signs of a developing addiction problem. Serenethica had been set up, as a joint non-profit-making subsidiary of several big pharmaceutical companies, to look into possibilities outside the usual kinds of alternative medicine, which were being studied elsewhere. The search hadn’t got very far, and the contract was under threat. However, by chance Norstein’s somewhat hyperactive son had come across John’s competition entry and been fascinated by it; since then his behaviour had improved remarkably. It might of course be pure coincidence, but the possibility of a causal link was just the kind of thing he was looking for, and if it seemed to be at all genuine, it would be well worth investigating more thoroughly. Had John noticed any such calming effect himself?

  “Not personally, but my wife ...”

  “May I talk to her?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Sandra described her experience as clearly as she could, which was not actually very illuminating, but that didn’t seem to worry Norstein. “The fact of your having the experience is the important thing, in the first instance. Is it the same whenever you look at it?”

  “It depends rather on my mood at the time. But it nearly always seems to calm down any worries that I have.”

  “Right. We really need a systematic study – try to cut out the random variation, or rather smooth it over. Would you be willing to spend some time in our laboratory while we examine the pattern of brain activity?”

  “How long? I do have a fair amount of commitments already.”

  “It’s hard to tell, but we’d need at least a day just to establish a base line. Better several days spread over say a month. After that it would depend on what turns up. Of course, anything personally sensitive that comes out of it would remain strictly confidential. We’d pay all expenses, naturally, and an honorarium for your time.”

  “Just what would that examination involve? I’m not too keen on the idea of having electrodes stuck in my skull!”

  “No need for that. The technique is completely non-invasive; you’ll wear a sort of cap with the sensors, and it shouldn’t be particularly uncomfortable.”

  “Would that mean having my head shaved?” Sandra was particularly proud of her hair, with good reason, and this was not a trivial issue.

  “Probably not – it would be a crying shame, wouldn’t it? – but do you mind if I have a look at your scalp? I’ll try not to muss you up too much.”

  After some muttering to himself while he examined various critical points, he decided that it should be possible to manage without serious disturbance, as long as she kept a smooth hair-do. “Oh, there’s one other thing, Mr. Hardcastle. We’ll need a licence to use your photograph. Our work will probably involve making some digital alterations, purely to test their effect, so I hope you’d have no objection.”

  “It hardly affects me, does it?”

  “I don’t see how it could, but we have to be covered. It might be as well to get your solicitor to check the terms. Or do you have an agent?”

  He didn’t, but the terms looked sensible and the fee Norstein suggested was ten times as high as John would have dared to ask, so agreement was soon reached.

  When Sandra turned up for the first day of tests, Norstein showed her into the laboratory and explained the procedure. To avoid fatigue, sessions would be short, a few minutes at a time, at least during the basic exploratory phase; later that might change according to the results obtained, but they needed to get a feel for it before setting up anything like a fixed programme. Her seat was provided with a head-rest that would actually prevent movement – “Does that bother you?”

  “No, not at all.”

  – so that cameras on either side of the screen facing her could record eye movements.

  “Why?”

  “Because they can sometimes give additional indications of what’s going on in the brain. We want all the information we can get. Now during the first phase of the test the image will remain as you’ve already seen it; we may vary other things that can affect mood, such as music or ambient lighting. There�
��s a microphone on the wing of the chair, and I’d like you to record how you feel before the image appears and any effects as they occur. It probably won’t be very precise, but be as objective as you can. You may be a bit nervous at first, but for our purposes that could be all to the good. OK so far?”

  “Yes. But you said ‘During the first phase ...’ What after that?”

  “Ah, that’s when it may start to become interesting. We’ll be making some more or less subtle changes to the image, without telling you exactly when, and I’d like you to record any changes in mood that you may notice, however slight they may be. It’s possible that they could be disturbing, so there’s a button to press in the arm of the chair if you want to stop immediately.”

  “A panic button?”

  “Well, I hope it won’t get to anything like panic, but we have to allow for the possibility, though of course you’ll probably be able to warn us if the effects look like becoming really distressing.”

  “Could they?”

  “I imagine that negative effects must be as likely as positive – we expect a kind of symmetry in that respect, though it’s really only an intuitive feeling – and it will be important to know about them, but we certainly don’t want them to get out of hand. It could be especially important to be careful in the third phase.”

  “Third phase? What’s that?”

  “We may not actually get so far – not for some time, anyway. The idea there, if things go well, is to set up a kind of feed-back loop – to use your brain patterns to control the changes to the image. That way we can test whether the connection is genuine or just fortuitous.”

  “Just a moment; can’t feedback loops sometimes get out of control, like a microphone picking up sound from a loudspeaker?”

  “A very good point. That’s called positive feedback. We might use that but only if you found the effect agreeable, and then with very great care. For unpleasant effects we’d use negative feedback, tending to nullify them. So it will be essential to describe the effects, if there are any, as fully as possible while they happen. But the whole idea is speculative; we shall need to evaluate the early results before we press on to anything like that. Ah, Jim ...”

  An assistant had entered the room with a notebook and pen. “This is Jim Harrison, the technician who’ll be controlling the tests. I dare say you might have preferred a woman ...”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve no objection at all to young men!”

  “Good ... But in any case, with no disrespect to our other people, Jim is easily the best we have for this kind of job.”

  “Spare my blushes, sir!”

  “I didn’t know you had any!”

  Jim grinned; he knew he had a reputation for cockiness and was honest enough to recognise some truth in it.

  Norstein had to leave them for other tasks, but said he would come to see her when the day’s tests were completed. “Of course, it you’re utterly sick of them before they’re finished, by all means stop, but please pop in to see me before you go. If you’d just like a break, there’s a fairly decent library with a coffee machine, and not all the literature there is technical. We use quite a lot of fiction in our work.”

  “Not in the reports, I hope?”

  “Touché. There has been a certain amount of charlatanism in our profession, I must admit. But we aim for higher standards. Whether we actually achieve them ... Perhaps we’d better not go there. I’ll leave you in Jim’s hands for the time being.”

  Jim set her up in the chair and adjusted the head restraints. He spent some time getting the cameras lined up exactly as he wanted them, and then proceeded as Norstein had described. At one point he adjusted the gain control on the voice recorder, prompting Sandra to ask if she was speaking too softly – “No, that’s fine, we can cope with whatever level you find comfortable.” After that everything went smoothly until Jim was satisfied that Phase One was complete and changed to a different programme. “Though it’s possible that we may come back to it if later results suggest that we’ve missed something.”

  “Is that likely?”

  “It quite often happens, particularly in a new field. It’d be surprising if we got everything right first time. To some extent we’re groping in the dark.” Sandra had a momentarily improper thought about groping in the dark with him, and was rather shocked to find it not entirely unwelcome. That reaction went unrecorded.

  “Well, Mrs. Hardcastle ...”

  “Sandra, please.”

  “Well, Sandra, I’ve just noticed that it’s nearly lunch time so it probably isn’t worth starting Phase Two until this afternoon.”

  “What do you do about lunch? I didn’t think to ask before.”

  “There aren’t enough of us here to warrant having our own canteen, and some of us bring sandwiches, but there’s a fairly decent pub in the village if that suits you. The bar lunch menu’s not bad, and there’s a proper restaurant if you prefer that.”

  “Same food at twice the price, I suppose.”

  “Well, not quite, but would you like to see?”

  “Fine, let’s do that.”

  It was a clear day for once after a week of bad weather, and Sandra was quite glad of the half-mile walk to the village to loosen up after her long spell sitting. On arrival they were spotted by Norstein who invited them to join him in the bar lounge. “How’s it going, Jim?”

  “All according to plan so far. Nothing particularly exciting, but it’s early yet.”

  “Quite. Are you happy with it, Mrs. Hardcastle?”

  “Well, I got a little stiff sitting there so long ...”

  “Very uncomfortable?”

  “Not really. Not enough to warrant going through all that setting-up again.”

  “Ah, I’m glad you see the point. But if you do start to find it troubling you, do speak out. It could easily affect the results.”

  “Er – Dr. Norstein ...”

  “Yes, Jim?”

  “You said we need a bit of stress to test whether the optical stimulus will ease it. Would that touch of discomfort do?”

  “I was thinking more of mental than physical stress – but yes, a good idea, if Mrs. Hardcastle doesn’t mind.” She didn’t.

  But then Norstein had another thought. “Tell me, Mrs. Hardcastle, have you ever had a particularly strong impression of having seen something that wasn’t actually there?”

  “You mean hallucination? What on earth gave you that idea?”

  “I’d rather not put a name to it just yet – there are some unpleasant overtones. And I’d better not say just now why it occurred to me in case it influences your response. But having something on your mind, and then thinking you could see it really present – perhaps only for a moment – have you ever had such an experience?”

  “It’s funny you should mention that.” Sandra told how on one occasion she had been worried about a favourite cat that had disappeared, but on waking the next morning she had thought it was in her room, only it gradually faded from view.

  “It wasn’t grinning, was it?” asked Jim. Norstein shot him a warning glance, but said nothing.

  “No, nothing like the Cheshire cat in Alice. The image started quite realistically in colour – it was a ginger tabby – then gradually lost it and eventually vanished altogether like smoke. All that time it was behaving just as the real cat might. People said I must have been still asleep, but I don’t believe it – I was quite definitely out of bed before I saw it.”

  “Are you suggesting that it was a ghost?” asked Jim facetiously.

  This time Norstein did intervene. “Jim, don’t be flippant. It could affect results. Go on, Sandra.”

  “Not at all. The real cat actually turned up after breakfast, accidentally shut in someone’s garage overnight I imagine. But is that the sort of thing you had in mind, Dr. Norstein?”

  “Very much so. An unusual experience, I dare say, but not unique. Many years ago a fairly reputable journalist described
something very similar, involving a complete railway train that he’d been expecting to board.”

  “Just as well he didn’t actually get into it,” commented Jim, but Norstein thought that being unable to make physical contact would have promptly broken the illusion.

  “It didn’t in my case,” said Sandra. “It wasn’t until I tried to stroke the cat, and put my hand right through it, that it even started to fade, and it must have taken five seconds at least after that. But why are you interested?”

  Norstein explained that there was no accepted theory on the causes of such appearances, and ideas that had been suggested seemed to concern persistent tendencies rather than isolated experiences such as Sandra’s. They supposed a disturbance entirely within the brain, but he wondered whether there might be an external manifestation, for instance in the eye; the bleaching of visual pigments normally sent signals to the brain, but if impulses somehow went the wrong way, might there be a detectable effect in the retina? Neurologists dismissed the idea, but he wasn’t convinced. “I dare say they’re right as far as direct effects are concerned, but there may be indirect influences. And after all, the eye has been described as a window on the soul, and there might be more to the phrase than metaphor. Do you think, Jim, you could modify your set up so that your cameras might pick up any traces there?”

  Jim, though privately believing that Norstein was off on one of his not infrequent wild goose chases, not to say his rocker, thought that it might be possible, given some fairly radical upgrades. Getting the necessary pieces of kit took time and to avoid wasting it, Phase Two proceeded under the former conditions.

  Meanwhile the statisticians were trying to find correlations between the laboratory notes, the instrumental records and Sandra’s commentary, with nothing very convincing showing up. However, by chance the first session’s recordings were allowed to run on past the end of the actual test, and showed a flurry of brain activity with no spoken comment but a suggestion of facial colouring. “That couldn’t be a blush, could it?”

  “It looks remarkably like it.”

  “Was there any change in the conditions just then?”

  “Jim’s notes end before that – I’ll ask if he remembers anything significant.”

  All he could recall was the change of programme, and this started a false trail that ended only when a recognisably similar response followed one of the image changes of Phase Two. The analysts pounced on it and noted the modification for special study in Phase Three. Norstein however pointed out that the suggestion of a blush, with an absence of verbal comment that might be significant, showed the need for particular caution. “It looks as though it may be something that embarrasses her, so make quite sure that when you apply the feedback it’s negative with a fairly high gain in the loop.”

  So it was done, but when the feedback was switched into action Sandra reacted violently and pressed the panic button. This caused consternation until someone suggested that because of the data processing involved, the instrumental response might have lagged far enough behind the impulse that triggered it to coincide with a neurological correction, overshoot, and set up a wild oscillation. Such an important reaction clearly warranted a thorough study, and Norstein asked if Sandra would be willing to co-operate provided that the loop gain were turned down to a level she could tolerate.

  Rather reluctantly, she agreed, but after a few sessions she told Norstein that she couldn’t go on with it.

  “Not even with the feedback reduced still further?”

  “I’m sorry, but no.”

  “I don’t want to push you, but …”

  “You see, it’s causing trouble at home.”

  “Too much time away? We can adjust the schedule if that would help.”

  “No, that’s not it. It’s rather embarrassing ... but ... well, it’s affecting my marriage.”

  “How on earth ...?”

  “You see, when I’m with my husband, and he starts to get affectionate, the mental images come back and … well, make it hard to respond.”

  “In what way?”

  “Oh, do we have to go right into it?”

  “I can’t force you – couldn’t even if I wanted to. But unless you can give an account of it, we’re left with a problem that we can’t begin to solve because we don’t know what it is. Anything you say will be in strict confidence, of course.” To emphasise the point, he went to the door and checked that there was no one else about.

  After a few minutes of internal wrestling, Sandra forced herself to say that whenever she reached the crucial moment, she found herself imagining being with someone else. She had strong views on the sanctity of marriage vows, dinned into her by a traditional upbringing, and the idea of even hypothetical adultery appalled her to the extent that she couldn’t bear to be touched.

  “Ah, I see. I suppose we should have thought of that – after all, psychologists have a reputation for putting everything down to sex, haven’t we?”

  “It isn’t funny!”

  “No, of course not – I didn’t mean to trivialise it. Very distressing. I’m sorry to press you, but – can you tell me? – the other person – was it anyone in particular?”

  Sandra struggled mentally for a few seconds, then – “Yes, it was.”

  “Would it be indelicate to ask who?”

  “It would, rather, but ... Well, I’m afraid it’s Jim.”

  “Jim? Oh, I see. I shall have to have words with that young man. If he’s been meddling -”

  “No, please don’t, it’s nothing like that. He’s never said or done anything the least bit out of line. It’s all my own fault.”

  “How? Surely not.”

  “It was at the end of the first session, when we were talking about the experimental programme. He said quite innocently that it couldn’t be set definitely in advance because we were groping in the dark, and although I knew perfectly well what he meant, I couldn’t help thinking of it literally.”

  “Ah. The instruments picked up some disturbance that you didn’t mention. Could that have been it?

  “Probably. It didn’t occur to me to say anything at the time – it would have been too embarrassing anyway.”

  Norstein was relieved but not altogether convinced, and did confront Jim with the situation. The lad protested that he had never had any idea of what triggered the particular response, and as that tallied with Sandra’s own account Norstein felt justified, with some misgivings, in leaving it there. However, it would clearly be wrong to proceed according to plan, and the sessions were suspended while intensive efforts were made in secret to develop ideas for reversing the effect.

  Every suggestion seemed to carry the risk of making bad matters worse, and Norstein (coming from a notoriously litigious society) started to have nightmares about a ruinously embarrassing lawsuit with Hardcastle claiming vast sums for alienation of affection or something of the sort. The tabloids would have a field day ...

  Jim was of course warned not to breathe a word about the problem outside the laboratory, or inside to anyone but Norstein or the remedial team. Secretly he was more than a little flattered by the idea of arousing such a storm of feminine lust, but sensible enough to keep a duly cautious guard on his tongue.

  Eventually it was Sandra herself who found the obvious answer to her problem. She got John to have a large print of the original Juliana picture framed and hung in their bedroom. Fixing it in her mind before retiring calmed her enough for her to resume tolerably satisfactory relations. Her relief was enormous, the effect was cumulative, and after a few weeks the situation was nearly enough back to normal. However, by common consent, it would have been wrong to continue the Serenethica investigations, and the project was quietly dropped with a note to the Journal of Experimental Psychology describing the gist of the observations in general terms and regretting that for practical reasons (by which might be understood budgetary constraints) it had not been feasible to take them to any further conclusion.<
br />
  There it might have rested but for a notebook left inadvertently on a desk top one night, a cleaner’s accidentally sweeping it on to the floor, and its falling open at a page where the phrase “Window on the soul” caught her eye and imagination. She read enough to get a garbled impression of what had been going on, and commented on it to her husband, who in turn mentioned it over a pint to his friend Stan Marshall who happened to work for the local weekly newspaper.

  Stan saw the possibility of a fairly lucrative scoop and put it to his editor Fred Wilkins, who had been getting increasingly anxious about a slowly but inexorably declining circulation. The opportunity seemed too good to miss, and he urged Stan to find out more if he could. Coming up against a blank wall convinced both of them that something really sensational had been going on at Serenethica, but Fred was wary of litigation and together with his managing director Bernard Higgins (who by a supposedly pure coincidence also happened to be his brother-in-law) pondered long and hard during several convivial evenings about how to make the most profitable use of what little real information they had with the minimum of legal risk.

  That information was merely that the boffins had been experimenting with some way to probe the workings of the mind but had hit a snag that put a sudden stop to the programme. The suggestion of sexual connections had obvious possibilities, but its vagueness made it liable to fall as flat as the news that the answer to life, the universe and everything was forty-two. Fred toyed with the idea of a banner headline on the lines of “WHAT STOPPED THE MIND-READERS?” just long enough to realise that if challenged he would have to admit having not the faintest idea.

  This he put to Stan when the reporter came to ask what was happening about his story. Stan took it as a wink or nod to an imaginative horse, returned to his original source, and suggested that if anything interesting should happen to fall out of a waste paper basket during her cleaning rounds, it might be worth her while to pass it on. Doris was doubtful, but her husband’s overtime had been cut and some extra cash would be more than welcome, while Stan assured her that whatever happened, nothing would be traceable to her. Privately he wondered afterwards how well he could honour that assurance, but it had slipped out unconsidered and he could hardly withdraw it.

  A few days later, Norstein returned to the laboratory one evening to pick up some documents he had forgotten. Almost about to leave with them, he was disturbed by the sound of a sneeze. It took him a moment or two to realise that it must be the cleaner, and several more to notice that the source of the sneezes seemed surprisingly static, before he went on tiptoe to investigate. He found Doris oblivious to his approach as she smoothed, examined and then discarded several papers until he startled her with a “What the hell are you doing?”

  Caught in the act, Doris evidently decided that open confession was the best policy, or perhaps it just tumbled out in panic. Even she was unsure afterwards. Norstein pointed out that it was a serious disciplinary matter, and he would have to think what to do about it. Leaving her to stew over it for a little while might be salutary, but reflecting afterwards, he realised that however justifiable sacking the woman might seem to him, an employment tribunal could well think otherwise. In any case it would probably arouse unwelcome publicity, and letting her off with a formal warning would suffice. Even better, it might provide an opportunity for diverting unwanted interest.

  First, however, was the little matter of the lapse in document security. He called in Jim Harrison and delivered what for him was a fairly severe rocket, though Jim himself felt that he had got off rather lightly. Then Norstein explained what had resulted from that carelessness.

  “I’m sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I can be about anything.”

  “A pity.”

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  Norstein explained his idea of feeding through Doris a train of totally bogus information that the paper could not resist publishing, to its own eventual discredit. “So I want you to go away and come back next week with some suitable taradiddle plausible enough to fool this reporter and his editor, but that we can show afterwards to be utter nonsense. Think you can do that?”

  “No telling until I try.”

  “Right. Get on with it.”

  For a start, Jim had to establish what Marshall actually knew. When asked, Doris was only too eager to cooperate, but she was flustered and her memory vague. The only solid item in it was the phrase “Window on the soul” which had struck her as poetic, and the fact that the project involved studying Sandra’s reactions to what was going on. Doris had never found anything more substantial. That made things a lot easier than they might have been, and if anything actually true had slipped out, it could be put down to her confusion. Jim had in effect a blank sheet to work on.

  He did have two constraints: the story must be credible enough to the unscientific public (a fairly undemanding condition) but on the other hand, either the supposed aim of the project or the methodology had to be demonstrably beyond the bounds of real possibility, so that whatever might be published about it could be shown up convincingly as rubbish. In any case, Jim had a vague but uneasy memory of a science fiction writer getting into hot water through inadvertently postulating some secret project uncomfortably close to an actual programme, and that gave a personal edge to the requirement.

  Ideas did not come readily. The first, developing a lie-detection system, he himself dismissed out of hand on the grounds that the suspect need only keep his eyes shut to frustrate such a test: grounds for heightened suspicion, perhaps, but no more. For days he had no others, and the “next week” deadline looked sure to be missed until, in Norstein’s absence, he took a telephone call from a Dr. James Robertson who introduced himself as a member of the editorial panel of the Journal of Experimental Psychology. “It’s about that paper you submitted in June.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “I’m afraid it’s a bit embarrassing. I’ve just had a quick glance through it, and come across the bit about a delay in data processing causing a feedback loop to go positive rather than negative. The thing is, electronic conduction is so enormously faster than neuronic that such a delay simply isn’t credible. Goodness knows what really caused the subject’s reaction, but I’d say it’s far more likely to have been something to do with a glitch in the electronics. It was a one-off event, I take it?”

  “Oh yes, we couldn’t consider repeating the experiment.”

  “Quite so. Well, I think it’s best to send the paper back informally to you for revision with nothing more about it in our records for the time being. Is that all right?”

  “Yes, certainly. And thank you very much.”

  “You’re welcome. And don’t worry too much about it – there’s enough real meat in the data to make a respectable publication, and off the record, it isn’t by any means the first time I’ve known an expert to come a cropper through straying outside his speciality.”

  Once disconnected, Jim leaned back in the chair and wiped his brow. “Phew!” He was pretty sure of having done the right thing in accepting Robertson’s suggestion, but wondered how Norstein was going to take it. Then he realised: here was a genuine “beyond the bounds” hypothesis – could he work it into a plausible scenario to leak to the reporter?

  Evidently not. Three hours’ pondering produced nothing viable, and although the ploy of putting a problem aside to let the answer creep up on him unawares had often proved successful on other occasions, this time it failed miserably: he probably couldn’t detach himself sufficiently, though maybe the answer simply didn’t exist at all. Time was running short, and he would have to try another tack. It was another hour before he remembered Norstein’s comment on Sandra’s “hallucination” that neurologists had dismissed as impossible the idea of reverse transmission along the optic nerve.

  After that it was easy enough to cook up a fiction in which one part of the scheme was a study of conditions
for such back-firing, another to detect consequent visible changes in the retina, a third to relate these images to brain activity, a fourth to interpret such activity as memories or plans of real events, and finally, perhaps, to present all this as evidence of criminal and particularly terrorist activity.

  This he put as his suggestion to Norstein, who harrumphed a bit about using one of his own ideas as the basis but was more or less pacified by Jim’s pointing out that it was only the primitive version that he had already been forced to abandon. The big question would be whether even a local journalist could be persuaded to believe not only such a confection of codswallop, but that a not unusually bright cleaner could gain access to it.

  Over the weekend Norstein realised that it wasn’t necessary to give him the whole story at once; if he swallowed the first instalment, that was enough, and any more would be a bonus. On the other hand, it didn’t look sensational enough for the paper to make a splash about it. In the end he compromised by setting out the framework for the supposed publication, with a rough draft of the first section and bullet points for the rest, and put the lot on a readily pocketable USB drive.

  On the Monday evening, turning up for her cleaning stint, Doris found Norstein anxiously searching the floor around his desk. “Working late, sir?” she asked.

  “Yes, I’ve been preparing a rather important paper. I was going to do some more work on it at home, but I can’t find the pen drive I’d copied it to. Must have dropped it somewhere, and I can’t stay any longer. I’m supposed to be picking my wife up in twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll make a point of looking for it. What does it look like?”

  “Like this,” showing her another specimen. “It’s a nuisance – I need to get at least a first draft finished by the weekend, and tonight and tomorrow are the only evenings I’ll have time for it.”

  “Is it the only copy that you’ve lost?”

  “No, thank goodness, the original’s on the computer itself.”

  “Then couldn’t you copy it on to this one?”

  “There isn’t enough space. Oh well, if it does turn up tonight, I should be just about able to finish the job tomorrow. Luckily what I’ve written so far isn’t particularly sensitive; I shouldn’t want the rest of it to get out prematurely. If you do find it, just drop it in this drawer, where I generally keep it. It won’t matter leaving it unlocked tonight.”

  “Right you are, sir. Good night.”

  Doris soon found the missing item in the angle between the desk leg and wall, and promptly called up Stan, explaining that she had what he was after but couldn’t do much with it, and why.

  “Are you going to be there for another hour?”

  “I should think so.”

  “Right, I’ll be round there in about half an hour with a lap-top, and copy it on to that.’”

  The next morning Stan took his prize to Fred Wilkins, who agreed that it looked very promising indeed but they needed to get hold of the full story, or as much of it as was put into usable form.

  “Well, tomorrow evening it should be in that desk draw.”

  “Presumably locked, from what you’ve been saying.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Hmm. Now, we wouldn’t want to do any burgling, would we?”

  “Perish the thought. We’ll just have to hope that it happens to be left open.”

  “There’s always hope.”

  Fortunately for Stan, an acquaintance recently returned from an enforced absence was adept at dealing with such things and, subject to suitable recompense which involved a certain amount of haggling, very willing to handle the matter of locks. By Thursday evening Fred had the complete story, as far as it was going, and Doris the wherewithal for her next mortgage repayment.

  The subject clearly warranted a full-scale editorial conference, which Fred called in strict confidence with Bernard, Stan, and Harry, the one other staff reporter, an older man thought to be getting a bit past it. Cautious by nature, he protested that getting a scoop like that looked too good to be true; had they done any checks on it?

  “Be realistic. Who could we trust with a thing like this?”

  “For that matter, who do we know that could give us a worthwhile opinion?”

  The general view was no one on both counts, so the next question was whether to splash the whole story on one issue of the paper or in effect serialise it according to the plan in the leaked document, as would be less dramatic but might give a greater increase in overall sales.

  Serialising was soon ruled out as the technicalities in the first three sections would interest hardly anyone. On the other hand, a big splash with no advance notice would reach only their habitual readers. The decision was therefore to have in one issue a headline such as “WHAT ARE THE BOFFINS UP TO?” over a text describing the general area and promising the substance the following week, which would give Stan and Fred time to make what they could of the rest.

  In fact they were fully occupied for a couple of weeks with items of more general interest, in particular a serious multiple accident at a notoriously confusing road junction about which there had been complaints for years, and a carnival featuring as special guest an ephemerally popular entertainer who had recently been all over the national media. Even so, they were able to fit in a prominent notice to look out for an important development the following week.

  For that they had thought up no improvement on their first idea of a headline. Then, beneath an over-magnified long shot of the Serenethica buildings, came “Within these innocent-looking precincts, who knows what fearful developments are taking place?” and a good deal more in similarly vague but suggestive vein, although Fred had blue-pencilled references to “patrols by ferocious guard dogs” as too many people knew there weren’t any; “Don’t let your imagination run away with you,” he warned. It finished with a promise to reveal in the following issue all that their intrepid investigators had been able to find.

  After a slightly anxious fortnight, Norstein was pleased to see that the bait had been taken and looked forward to see what the paper would make of it the following week. He was not disappointed; the headline “DEFEATING THE BURQA” was followed by a brief account of the supposed research programme and how the prospect of reading the mind through visible effects in the eye might transform airport security, for example, but on the other hand lead to anyone’s most intimate secrets being laid bare, probably without their knowledge. Inside was an editorial going to town on the possible implications and pontificating on the ethical aspects.

  Delighted, Norstein faxed the relevant bits to his old friend Jimmy Robertson, who had been forewarned in a note primarily of thanks for pointing out the howler in the intended publication, and was to submit a comprehensive rebuttal in a letter to the editor.

  The next editorial conference was rather fraught. Fred had consulted the head of biology at his son’s school and been convinced that the letter was genuine and accurate. Harry could hardly be denied his “Told you so” moment, but refrained from milking it, and Fred grimly got down to business. Bernard thought they might bluff it out since publication of letters was entirely at the editor’s discretion, but Fred was sure that an attempt to suppress it would be futile and only make matters worse, while in any case the others were against hiding behind a dodgy technicality. “Let’s face it,” Harry said. “We’ve been well and truly hoaxed, and the only way to save any sort of face is to take it as a joke that has come off brilliantly, and congratulate whoever is responsible.”

  “With thanks to the writer of that letter for putting us right,” suggested Stan, to rather reluctant assent.

  “But tucked well away inside,” grumbled Bernard.

  “No, you’ve missed the point. Give it extra prominence to show that we’re taking it with a good grace,” insisted Harry. “Make the hoax the main feature – after all, we’ve nothing more interesting to report this week – with a ‘See letter on page…’ whatever it is. Fairly near the front.”
>
  So it was done, with a rather sanctimonious editorial on the importance of honesty in journalism, the wisdom of accepting justified correction and in praise of British humour. Stan thought it decidedly overdone, though better that way than the other, and after all, subtlety wasn’t expected.

  He realised that the duff information had been fed to him deliberately, but whether Doris knew it was so was another matter. In any case he was in no position to complain, but the next time he met Bill Edwards, her husband, he did mention the debacle without getting any significant response, so however deeply or otherwise Doris was involved he was probably unaware of it.

  Doris herself was having sleepless nights over the tangle she had got herself into, particularly the threat of disciplinary action that might still be hanging over her, so she made a point of arriving early until she managed to catch Norstein on his own and tackle him about it.

  “Good Lord, are you still worrying about that? My fault, I should have made it clear long ago that I’d dropped the idea. Is that all that’s bothering you?”

  “Well, not quite, sir. That reporter gave me a fair amount of money; do you think I ought to give it back?”

  “I don’t see why. You weren’t to know I was having him on, so as far as you and he were concerned it was an honest transaction. Has he said anything about it?”

  “Not so far.”

  “If he does, let me know.”

  On reflection, the paper had reacted better than he had expected to the trick played on it. If there really was public concern about what was being done at the laboratory, it would be no bad thing to have it on his side, so he dropped a note to the editor to the effect that in due course he might like to have the real story, as far as it could be released and might be generally understood. It was gratefully acknowledged and there the matter rested for the time being.

  Some of this came to the attention of the Serenethica board of management, and Norstein had a little difficulty in explaining to the CEO how the project had come to gain so much unwelcome publicity. It was also pointed out to him that while pure scientific research was up to a point good for the organisation’s image, his main task was to find practical treatments. Moreover, considered merely as an exercise in demonstrating that the pharmaceutical industry was not concerned solely with profits, expenditure on it had been greater than could be justified and his budget would thenceforward be more closely scrutinised.

  The argument that it was better to treat causes than symptoms (one so inappropriate that he hadn’t thought of using it, but that didn’t stop the CEO) was perfectly correct in principle but irrelevant in this case, since there was no need to look very far or dig very deeply to find plentiful causes of anxiety and as a rule there was little that could be done about them. He had shown how to optimise one particular palliative: fine as far as it went, but it was on a single individual, and there was nothing to show how far it would apply to others, if at all. He could have six months to investigate that, and unless it gave results manifestly worth further pursuit, the project would be closed. As no others were showing much promise, it would then be necessary to think very seriously about the future of the laboratory.

  Given this ultimatum, Norstein had to work fast, but before putting out a general advertisement for volunteer guinea-pigs he decided to try a few tests on someone already available; if they proved negative it would be hard to justify proceeding further. Doris was about as ordinary a person as he was likely to meet, already in a state of some anxiety despite his attempts to calm her, and she needed the extra money that as an existing employee she could fairly claim for extra hours’ work however undemanding it might be. Fortunately the tests would not need the elaborate set-up prepared for Sandra, just a means of recording her “better” or “worse” judgements of variants on the Juliana picture, rather as in an optician’s procedure for establishing a spectacle prescription.

  First of all he had to find whether she was affected at all by the picture, so he waited for her one evening and asked if she would help with a little experiment.

  “What sort of experiment, sir?”

  “I just want you to look through a set of pictures and tell me – ”

  “Oh, sir, I never …”

  “Not that sort of picture! You could safely send these to your maiden aunt.”

  He didn’t know that that lady had been a hostess in a strip club, and Doris saw no need to tell him. He produced a set of soothing images with Juliana among them, told her to go through them taking her time, and noted that she lingered on that one with a slight smile. Then he shuffled them and again Doris favoured Juliana. He asked why.

  “I dunno. It just made me feel – sort of – peaceful.”

  “Right, thank you, Doris, that’s all I wanted to know. It means you’re suitable for some work we’re going to do here. It wouldn’t be difficult. Would you be willing to come in during the day some times? You’d be paid for it, of course.”

  “Well, I couldn’t do it regular …”

  “As it suits you.”

  “Well, thank you, then.”

  “Very good. I’ll work out a schedule with you.”

  “Oh, good Lord, look at the time! I’ll never get through my round before I have to go …”

  “Don’t worry. It’ll do no harm to give it a miss for once. If anyone complains I’ll explain why. You’ll get your full pay.”

  Doris’s husband was surprised by her getting home slightly earlier than usual, and a few days later intrigued by what she had since been required to do. Inevitably he commented on it to Stan when they next met in the pub. With what he had learned earlier, Stan deduced that the programme was something to do with mood adjustment. From other sources he had heard rumours of impending closure of the laboratory. With these in mind he went off to see an old friend in London. A month later he telephoned Norstein and asked for a meeting.

  “I can’t tell you any more just yet, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s not what I’m after. It’s the other way round, if anything. Could we have a confidential discussion?”

  “I’m not sure I like the sound of this.”

  “It’s no sort of blackmail, if that’s what’s worrying you. A possibly helpful suggestion.”

  “In that case, I don’t see why not.”

  Stan explained about the rumours he had heard – no, he didn’t expect either confirmation or denial – and what he had been able to gather from the technical information he already had. It greatly interested a friend of his in the business of interactive games. The idea of using brain impulses to modify computer screen images particularly attracted him, and if suitable software already existed it would be foolish to re-invent it. Did Norstein think Serenethica would be willing to license it, or even sell it if the organisation were not proceeding along that road?

  “It would be a matter for the board, and a pretty revolutionary departure from anything they’ve been thinking about so far. That doesn’t necessarily rule it out, though they aren’t exactly revolutionary types. But the software’s nothing like adequately documented, and I can’t see them authorising the effort to do that.”

  “I suppose not. But the people who understand it are liable to be made redundant within the year, aren’t they?”

  “I see you’ve been doing your homework. There is that threat, it’s true. So far it’s no more.”

  “But a very definite possibility. Now my friend works for a pretty big conglomerate. They’re willing to put a real effort into this idea. They’d need staff, they’d need kit, they’d need know-how, they’d need premises. You have them. How do you think your board might react to an offer to take over the whole laboratory, lock, stock, barrel and personnel, including yourself retained as director?”

  “Phew! You don’t think small, do you? I couldn’t say for certain, of course, but if the money’s right I’ve a strong suspicion they’d jump at the chance.”

  “Right. Now obviously I’m not going to be involved in that sort of
negotiation. All I need is a name and address for contact.”

  “Fine. But just as a matter of interest, what do you get out of this?”

  “From you, an exclusive interview about it before it’s common knowledge.”

  “I’m not sure that would be within my gift. But I can promise you to do the best I can – supposing all this comes to anything, of course.”

  “That’s good enough for me.”

  “You’re very trusting. Why?”

  “Apart from the hoax – and we were fair game for that – you’ve been pretty decent to us. Not many people would have taken our spying on you so well. I think you’re a good risk.”

  “I’m flattered.” They shook hands on the deal.

  Time, like an ever rolling stream, notoriously bears all its sons away, and a great deal else besides. In two or three years Sandra Hardcastle’s experiences at Serenethica had almost gone in the way of Isaac Watts’s verse, though not quite forgotten. She was shopping with John for a very particular present: her cousin’s son William had won a scholarship that the family was extremely anxious he should gain, and asked what he would like as a personal reward, had opted for a game that was all the rage among his friends. It cost more than his parents had intended, but the Hardcastles had offered to chip in, and as John was the nearest to knowing anything about such things they were deputed to get it.

  It was not available anywhere in their own town, and after an unfortunate experience John was reluctant to venture again into Internet shopping. However, a friend located a source not too far away, and printed a street plan with a pointer to the shop. They had some difficulty in relating this to the layout on the ground and went wrong a few times on the way from the car park, but eventually Sandra spotted it about fifty yards away. Crossing the road was difficult, and she was there first.

  Catching up, John asked what she was gawping at. She just pointed at the design on the box in the window. “Yes,” he agreed. “It’s Juliana.”

  Return to Contents

  SVETLANA

  It was years - no, decades - since I’d seen or heard anything of Dmitri Grigoriev. In fact I’d met him only once, at a Harwell conference in the Cold War era: even then, relations at a technical level with Russians were quite cordial. He was the interpreter and minder, presumably KGB, for a visiting Soviet professor. I couldn’t remember what that particular conference had been about, but I did recall him as a cheerful, affable fellow, liked by everyone, though of course there was no telling whether that was his real character or just a façade. Actually, I suppose much the same could be said about any of us.

  Given such a lapse of time, an e-mail from him came as a complete surprise, and I still wonder how he found my address, but it hardly matters. After some preliminaries, the gist of it was to ask whether some IAEA papers on thorium as a nuclear fuel, under what appeared to be my name, were indeed mine. That took me back quite a few years, but they were, and in his next message he proposed a meeting to discuss an unspecified matter that might interest me, suggesting lunch at any hotel I could recommend for his stay.

  I doubted whether I could really be very much use to him, as the papers had been essentially a theoretical exercise based on others’ practical experience rather than my own. However, those others were probably no longer around, a free lunch seldom goes amiss, and in any case I was intrigued, so I was quite happy to make an arrangement for the following month.

  Grigoriev was of course much older than I remembered him, and rather stouter, but still as agreeable as before. He introduced a woman in perhaps her mid-thirties as his daughter Svetlana, acting as his chauffeur since after a recent cataract operation he was not yet fit to drive himself. She seemed rather subdued, and later he privately told me that a few months earlier she had lost a good husband to cancer and his real purpose in bringing her along rather than his regular driver was in the hope of taking her mind off it as far as possible. I doubt whether that particular conversation helped her very much, but the general idea was good.

  When we got down to brass tacks after the meal, it emerged that Grigoriev was a partner in a private company in the energy sector, looking for ways to expand, and had noticed a widespread revival of interest in thorium after a long period when it had fallen below the horizon. In particular he had read about a novel kind of fuel, based on thorium, proposed by one Walter Gruneberg, but although trials at the Kurchatov Institute were mentioned, nothing seemed to be emerging from them. His work evidently had a similar context to mine; did I know anything about the project?

  As it happened, I did. I had got to know Gruneberg fairly well during the 1990s, although by then he was very old, probably little more than a figurehead for his organisation, and my main contact was his chief assistant with whom over the years I came to a good understanding. I can get on comfortably with most people, but Gruneberg himself (to adapt a comment in a play I once saw) was not just a first-class pain in the neck, he was Olympic standard. At every opportunity he would insist that if we carried on as we were doing, disaster was inevitable. It was like Cato’s “Carthago delenda est.” I admired his ingenuity, but he strained my patience to the limit by buttonholing me whenever we met and, however many times I’d told him, demanding yet again why I wouldn’t support his pet idea.

  “And why wouldn’t you?”

  “Because his scheme would cost billions, it couldn’t really make much difference to his supposed disaster, and there was a serious question of whether it would work at all.”

  “What sort of question? Something wrong with his calculations?”

  “No, they were way beyond me. It was a straightforward mechanical problem. The scheme involved replacing conventional fuel elements with a composite type - a core with an outer blanket. Gruneberg’s whole idea depended on changing each core every few years, but after the distortion that occurs in a reactor, I didn’t think it could be done, at least not reliably enough to satisfy the operators. I imagine that’s why we’ve heard nothing from the Kurchatov.”

  “But your papers don’t mention it.”

  “No, I was working on a completely different kind of scheme. Not one I’d really recommend, as things are, but I’d been asked to work something out and if nothing else it provided an opportunity to inject a bit of common sense into other discussions. In any case it might be needed if supplies of uranium ran out. For various reasons thorium couldn’t be a direct substitute ...”

  At that moment Grigoriev’s phone rang and he excused himself to answer it. He was gone for quite a time and I tried to make conversation with Svetlana. She had good English, very fortunately since my Russian doesn’t go much beyond transliteration, and it turned out that we had a common interest in music. Moreover, she was particularly keen on Borodin and Rachmaninov, among my own favourites.

  Grigoriev eventually returned and, deeply embarrassed, asked if I would do him a very great favour. An emergency had arisen demanding his immediate attention, he might be away for up to a week and he couldn’t take Svetlana. She would stay on at the hotel, but he was anxious about leaving her alone in a strange environment, especially in her current state of depression; could I possibly keep an eye on her and provide some entertainment? All expenses paid, of course.

  My commitments for that time were not too heavy and I was glad to oblige. Grigoriev, greatly relieved, explained that he was to be picked up by helicopter in an hour’s time, so Svetlana would have the use of his hire car and he urged her not to stint it. He then went to pack the necessities for his departure; Svetlana had seemed to offer help, evidently declined.

  She was clearly too worried to pay much attention to me. From the little she said, I gathered that there was some danger involved in her father’s mission but it seemed best not to inquire further.

  The arrival of the chopper caused quite a stir among the hotel staff, who had probably never seen one at such close quarters. Neither had I, for that matter. Grigoriev appeared with a suitcase and a smaller bag that he entrusted to h
is daughter. After a quick hug, he boarded and was gone.

  I’d thought of suggesting a run to local beauty spots, but the sky darkened, a squall blew in from the sea and was followed by steady rain. The hills vanished under cloud, and I thought the best thing was to take Svetlana home and let her rummage through my collection of music recordings. Rachmaninov would be a bit heavy for the circumstances, but as she had mentioned Borodin, for a start while she made her own choice I put on the second quartet, easy listening but still classically respectable.

  She seemed undecided, but said that she was unfamiliar with British music and would I suggest something? Since she evidently favoured the later romantics, I tried a bit of Elgar that she thought she might come to like on closer acquaintance. Some carefully-chosen Vaughan Williams was another possibility, Holst was borderline but Britten got a definite thumbs down: too modern, so I tried some of Finzi’s settings of Thomas Hardy; they suited her much better.

  After absenting myself for a few minutes I returned to find her scanning my bookshelves. She explained that with worry over her father, she would probably have difficulty sleeping, and as she hadn’t thought to bring any substantial reading matter, could she borrow something to pass the night?

  “What sort of something?”

  “Serious enough to hold my attention, but not too demanding.”

  I offered various possibilities and she settled on a Rumpole omnibus. After that it was time to return to her hotel, and I ran her back there. I was about to ask what time to meet her the next day when she said she had strict instructions from her father to give me dinner there.

  I couldn’t resist asking if she always followed his instructions. “Not always to the letter,” she admitted with a hint of mischief that I thought showed encouraging signs of recovery from her gloom.

  The next day started sunny, so I suggested a run round the western lakes. She was going to take the hire car, but I pointed out that she couldn’t appreciate the scenery as driver, I wasn’t going to risk driving an unfamiliar vehicle round some of the roads involved, and mine was probably better suited to them anyway. She saw the logic, but insisted on paying when I refuelled, and I had no objection.

  It was Saturday, and in the evening she surprised me by saying that she would like to go to church the following day. I don’t really know why it was a surprise, as Russians have a reputation for being religious, but the possibility simply hadn’t occurred to me. So far as I knew there was no Orthodox church within striking distance, but she said the Orthodox and Anglican churches were in communion. Even better, if I was going to another she’d like to come with me, assuming that it would be acceptable.

  I assured her she’d be very welcome, and in fact everyone made a great fuss of her. Later I got a fair amount of ribbing about it, and it was no use protesting that I was more than old enough to be her father, especially since not very long before an elderly neighbour had acquired an attractive young Spanish wife who within a year presented him with a son. But that’s by the way; the immediate outcome was a string of invitations long enough to fill her time for a fortnight.

  In the event she could take up only a few. To her immense relief her father called the next evening to say he would return in the following afternoon. The reunion was very emotional. Grigoriev then thanked me effusively for looking after his daughter in a difficult situation, and I assured him quite truthfully that it had been a pleasure. He was too tired to talk business just then, but would be in touch. After collecting his remaining belongings from the hotel they made their farewells, with a hug from Svetlana that left me breathless.

  The next few days felt rather empty.

  A few weeks afterwards a bulky parcel arrived with a Moscow postmark. In the covering letter, Grigoriev explained that in view of my advice he had decided not to pursue his tentative interest in thorium, but in appreciation and especially in gratitude for my care of Svetlana he hoped I would accept the enclosed gift - a splendid and lavishly-illustrated book on treasures of the Kremlin. I certainly wasn’t going to send it back.

  I thought that was the end of the matter. However, about a year later, a rather mysterious e-mail urged me to keep free a particular week some months on. Nearer that time came another package, with a photograph of Svetlana looking beatifically happy beside a man very smart in military uniform, and a formal invitation to their wedding. Also enclosed were a business-class return ticket to Moscow, instructions for meeting the chauffeur on arrival, and a voucher for a pre-paid three-day reservation in the Slavyanskaya Hotel.

  Apart from the need to get a new suit, I’ve only one problem with that. What on earth am I to give as a wedding present?

  Return to Contents

  THE ROAD TAKEN

  Where did that road lead to? Bob had always taken the newer carriageway cutting diagonally across the hillside, with a bridge over the gully where a minor stream plunged in a cascade of waterfalls towards the patchwork of fields on the level plain, but the old road was still there, snaking away to the left before the start of the climb and into a wooded area where it was not visible from above. Maybe it just petered out, very probably in fact since there was no direction sign at the junction and no visible continuation beyond the wood, although at one time it must have gone on to reach the higher ground by a completely different route. Nevertheless, Bob this time felt an almost irresistible urge to investigate.

  Always before, at the start of his two weeks’ leave, he had hurried on to be with his family as quickly as possible. But now Marjorie was dead, the children taken into care with unknown foster parents, and there was nothing but the empty house awaiting him. There was no reason why he should resist that urge. Almost automatically, as he reached the junction, the car veered on to the older route.

  The first bend in it, not by any means severe, told him that he had to slow down. It was followed by several more even gentler, but he reminded himself that there was no need to hurry and stuck to his calmer pace. For the first mile or so the road wound through the haphazard pattern of fields bounded by rather untidy hedges as he had often noted from the hillside. There was nothing desperately wrong with them, just a general air of slight neglect that he found depressing. Then, rounding a bend sharper than usual, he felt there was something different. What it might be escaped him for a while, but then he realised that the hedge on the left was properly laid. He stopped for a moment to examine it.

  It was years since he had seen anything of the sort, and the discovery lifted his spirits sharply. The work had evidently been done years before, but a little further on there was a much newer stretch and he wondered hopefully if the craft might still be practised here. Sure enough, after a few more twists in the road, he came across a couple of farm hands busily engaged in it. The start of a track on the right widened to a space where he could park without causing obstruction.

  “Mind if I watch?” he called to the men.

  “Nay, tha’ll not bother us,” the elder replied, a wiry, weather-beaten character with ill-kempt grey hair; Bob guessed him to be about seventy. He carried on notching the pleachers while the other, possibly his son, wove them together to make a strong barrier.

  Bob strolled across and admired the work. “This really brings back memories. I haven’t seen hedge-laying since I was a child,” he remarked, and the man nodded.

  “Aye, there’s none but us still doing it round here. Other folks are in too much of a rush.”

  Bob made some comment about being glad to see the tradition being handed on. That memory of childhood suddenly came into sharp focus: a broad path between a hawthorn hedge on the left and a tiny stream to the right, never more than a foot wide; often he had tried to dam it with pebbles, always breached and washed away before the water rose more than an inch or two. Curiously he had no recollection, if he had ever known, of where it came from or where it went. Beyond the hedge a series of fields rose more and more steeply towards a crest along which a tarmac road was laid years later. The hedge ended at the st
art of the last field before a worked-out clay pit where he often played around the limestone outcrops. On his way from school he might strike diagonally across that field or, depending on what the cows were doing, continue to the rickety fence along the edge of the quarry and climb the steep, narrow path there.

  On just one occasion Bob had come across a hedging job in progress and been fascinated by it. Thinking back, he suddenly wondered when that experience could have been. There were only two or three years when it might have been possible, between his family’s moving to the house on the ridge and his own going on from primary to grammar school on the other side of the town.

  It was there that he had met Marjorie. They had not been friends at first, far from it; however, years later when they were leading opposing sides in a school debate, Marjorie made a point that Bob tried to rubbish but later felt deserved discussing privately with her. One thing led to another and in their early twenties they married.

  After the usual ups and downs things seemed to be going pretty well until the arrival of a second child, inconveniently soon after the first, put a strain on their finances. Bob very reluctantly took a new job, much more lucrative than before but requiring him to work abroad between spells of home leave. It was a dreadful strain, only made bearable by necessity and the thought that the three-year contract should set them up for the foreseeable future.

  At a necessary stop on his way home for the last spell of leave, he had bumped into an old friend who insisted on dragging him along to a stag-night party. Bob was a conscientiously moderate drinker and confined himself, as he thought, to a couple of halves before leaving as soon as he decently could, but some fool had heavily spiked them and he landed home very much worse for wear. There he found Marjorie in what his confused mind mistook to be a compromising situation with a neighbour, and went berserk. The flash of the hedger’s billhook brought back the terrible mental image of Marjorie lying bleeding on the floor and the neighbour trying frantically to wrest a heavy kitchen knife from his hand.

  The hedger’s “Are you all right?” shook him from his reverie. He came to himself shaking like a leaf and very clearly not all right, but he assured the man that it was just a passing moment and he would be fit enough in a couple of minutes. The two helped him back to the car and into the driving seat. As an afterthought the older man took the ignition key from the switch and put it on the passenger seat; it wasn’t much of a precaution, but Bob would at least need enough physical coordination to replace it before he could drive.

  In fact the emotional turmoil had tired him and he dozed. When he awoke about an hour later, the hedgers had finished their job and departed. He noticed with appreciation of their forethought where the key had been put, but felt rather stiff and decided to take a walk before driving on; it was painful at first, but a few dozen paces cleared the worst of it. Round the next bend he found the farmhouse and considered calling in with his thanks, but decided it might add to the inconvenience he had already caused and instead carried on. Beyond it the tarmac had ceased to be maintained, as he had suspected it eventually might, and the road quickly degenerated into an unpaved track.

  It was evidently still used for light traffic, continuing about eight feet wide with quite a good firm surface. On the right was a little stream, and Bob could not resist trying the effect of a few pebbles as a primitive dam; it burst almost immediately. The hedge on the left was tall and straggling, and as he went on, through it he caught glimpses of fields rising more and more steeply to a crest that he hadn’t noticed from the new road, but perhaps the relief of the terrain was less obvious from that height. After perhaps half a mile the hedge ended, and a couple of hundred yards further a rickety fence came down from the left to the edge of the track.

  For some reason Bob decided to follow that rather than continue along the level. There was not really a path, just a narrow worn trail where many feet had gone along close by the fence, but at least it showed that there was a destination to be expected. It soon came to the lip of an old quarry where the worked-out surface had been levelled and a cluster of houses built, with an access road leading off to the right apparently to meet the line of the track a little further on. At the top of the field, he found there was a choice of direction: to the right was a broad track between the hedge bounding the quarry site and the back gardens of a row of houses, ahead was a narrow but paved footpath to the road on to which they fronted. He chose the track.

  The gardens were generally well kept, with a couple ending in hard standing for a car. He soon came to the drive that allowed access from the road. On the near corner a wire fence was festooned with bindweed and woody nightshade; he stopped to admire the natural conjunction of extravagant white trumpets, probed by butterflies, alongside the much smaller, vivid yellow and purple flowers and waxy red berries of the nightshade.

  On the other side his mother finished hanging out washing on the clothes line, and picking up the empty basket noticed that he was there. “Thank goodness. Come along, Bob, wherever have you been? I was getting quite worried.”

  “Sorry, Mum, I was watching some men fixing the hedge. I’d never seen that before. Sorry”

  “Well, never mind that. Come and get your tea while it’s still worth eating.”

  Inside, he dumped his jacket and after the ritual reminder was about to wash his hands when a sudden clamour startled him. The scene was blotted out, he found himself somehow constrained and a kind of panic seized him until he realised that the bed sheet was over his head, trapped beneath his shoulder and making it awkward to reach out and silence the alarm. At last he managed it.

  Realising the time he was shocked. Then he remembered something else and groaned “Oh, hell! I’d forgotten.”

  Marjorie, entering the bedroom, asked what was the matter. “I forgot it was the kids’ school outing today.”

  “Stop fretting, it’s all right. I got everything ready last night, and packed them off in plenty of time.”

  “Thank goodness. But why ever didn’t you wake me?”

  “You had such a bad night, tossing and turning, that I set the alarm for an hour later and let you sleep on.”

  “I wish you hadn’t. I had a dreadful nightmare.”

  “Well, I wasn’t to know that. But now we can have a leisurely breakfast by ourselves for once.”

  Bob dressed himself quickly and sat at the table, noticing an envelope under his side plate. “What’s this?”

  “No idea. But there’s one way to find out. No, not that knife - it’s got marmalade on it.”

  Choosing another he slit the envelope and scanned the contents. “Good lord!”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s from Turnbulls.”

  “I could see that. Go on!”

  “It’s the damnedest thing – they want me to take on a three-year job in Angola.”

  Return to Contents

  ERNSCAR

  Ernscar Castle was small as castles go, but still impressive. Geoffrey Randall always boasted to visitors that it had stood for nine hundred years or more, and would usually add, rather unnecessarily, “on the same spot” as though some previous owner might have taken it into his head to transfer the whole edifice from a different site. Complete buildings have been moved, true, but not to such a position, perched on the tallest outcrop of rock for miles around - the Erne Scar of the name.

  In fact not much of the original building remained: over the centuries it had been modified extensively, with re-fashioning under the Tudors after it had been left partly ruined for years from a siege in the Wars of the Roses, serious damage in the Civil War, repair some time after the Restoration by a lord who had been kind to the young Nell Gwyn in the last years of the Commonwealth, disastrous “improvements” in the 18th century and a much more successful modernisation in the style of Lutyens in the early 20th. Nevertheless the Norman keep was still discernible as the basis of the structure.

  Geoffrey was inclined to be fanciful about his forebears,
but one thing he never attempted to claim was descent from the original builders or any of their successors. He had simply bought the place when it came on the market just after his wife’s winning the lottery jackpot roughly coincided with the take-over of the business that he had built up from scratch into a very successful enterprise, and after forty years of hard work he relished the idea of turning himself into a country gentleman of leisure. However, a genealogy commissioned by his wife as a retirement present tentatively suggested a connection with one Thomas Miller who had been jester to Lord Ernscar in the fifteenth century and might or might not have been the original “Tom-Fool,” but whose notorious tight-fistedness belied the proverb that “a fool and his money are easily parted.” Geoffrey himself was by no means stingy, although careful in considering any substantial expenditure. He heeded his wife’s warning that money could never buy respect, and anyway there was much less than she had expected left over after the necessary refurbishment of the building, so he gave time instead to various local organisations. He didn’t talk unnecessarily about his involvement, but it became known, and the general view among the villagers was that he was “not a bad sort, for an off-comer.”

  The Randalls had one son, John, unmarried. He had lived away ever since taking his first job but visited whenever his other commitments permitted. Helen often contrived at such times to invite eligible young women for meals or social events, but despite some tentative nibbles, the fish never seriously took the bait. He said he was too busy for that sort of thing. Helen suspected that life in the city was not strictly monastic, but kept her thoughts to herself, and John himself never mentioned a girl friend until quite out of the blue he asked if he could bring one to stay for the weekend. This threw Helen into a tizzy of preparations, and having a traditional view of morality, she carefully prepared a spare room, aired the bed, put out perfumed soap and new towels, and despite an anxious thought about the possibility of hay fever, added a couple of vases of flowers. The room was fairly near John’s, but some distance from her own; if there was to be any traffic between the two she didn’t want to know about it.

  She was of course consumed with curiosity about what the girl would be like. For no particular reason she imagined a willowy blonde out of a fashion plate, with half a dozen degrees in modern languages and business studies, and a habit of reading Wittgenstein in bed - at any rate when not … She quickly banished that thought.

  In the event, when the two arrived, Anne proved quite different from expectations: a shade on the plump side, by no means beautiful though pleasant-looking enough, neatly but not elaborately groomed and dressed, interested in the garden, cheerful and friendly without gushing. On Geoffrey, who prided himself as a judge of character, the first impression was favourable and confirmed by better acquaintance. Helen was in any case predisposed to like the girl and found no reason for any other opinion, apart perhaps from a tendency to tease John rather sharply about various little oddities that he had picked up over the years. He didn’t seem to mind.

  The weekend passed happily and was the first of many, to the extent that Helen began to think seriously about the prospects of an undeniable excuse for buying a really expensive new hat, but there was no sign of any developments in that direction. Having unintentionally choked one promising relationship by asking too early to have it defined, she bit back the questions she was dying to ask, but privately wondered whether anything was ever going to come of it. “Patience,” urged Geoffrey. “He’ll tell us in his own good time.”

  In truth there was little to tell. Anne enjoyed John’s company, and would have liked to make it permanent, but sensed that he was less keen on the idea and was reluctant to risk a make-or-break confrontation. John in fact was in much the same quandary. Both had been single long enough to appreciate the advantages as well as the drawbacks of that state, and so the misunderstanding continued, only gradually putting a cloud on the relationship.

  The first sign of Anne’s being rather less stolid than everyone assumed came one morning during a visit when, asked if she had slept well, she avoided a direct answer, but later wondered apparently in all seriousness whether there were any stories of haunting at the castle. “Not that I know of. Are you interested in that sort of thing?”

  “Not specially; I just wondered.”

  “Have you heard any rumours, Geoffrey?”

  “Not a thing. But then I don’t suppose I should. What brings it to mind?”

  It turned out that as it was a fine, warm night, Anne had left the window open. She awakened in the early hours as the light of the setting moon fell on an old picture in the room, and experienced an overwhelming sensation of sadness that seemed more strongly reflected than she remembered in the features of the young woman portrayed there. Fortunately there were no more tangible manifestations, though she had dozed fitfully for the rest of the night.

  There was some mystery about that painting. A note in the Tudor records showed that the picture had been found during renovations, and a letter from the then Lord Ernscar to his cousin mentioned that it was being re-framed as a birthday gift to his lady who thought it interesting despite its technical deficiencies. A scribble on the back, even then barely decipherable and subsequently covered by a backing that was hardly worth removing, seemed to indicate that it represented the daughter of the mediaeval Thomas Miller, although why so lowly a character should have been painted no one knew, nor why that portrait alone from the period should have been preserved. A search of the parish register had shown the baptism of an Alison Miller in 1418, but nothing about her marriage or death, and there was no chance of checking the register in modern times as it was lost in the 17th century.

  During one of Anne’s later visits, the Randalls were entertaining an old student friend of Geoffrey’s who had astounded the acquaintance of his youth by going on to become a professor of theology. He had an amateur interest in art history, and Anne took the opportunity to ask if he could deduce anything about the painting. “I’m afraid it isn’t of the best quality, but of course you already know that. I think we can safely say that it isn’t by one of the known masters, unless a very early student effort, possibly preserved for some sentimental reason. At a guess it’s probably of the Flemish school, 15th century or thereabouts, but if you want anything more definite you’d better get a real expert on the job.”

  He had been John’s godfather and still took an interest in his activities, so during dinner was eager for the latest news. Geoffrey was more interested in the professor’s. “Quite an interesting conference in Louvain last April. Otherwise the usual grind. Lectures, tutorials, seminars, trying to keep up the flow of learned papers. These days it’s ‘Publish or be damned,’ you know.”

  Geoffrey, who on religious matters remained agnostic, couldn’t resist taking up one of the usual arguments. “Talking of damnation, Brian, what I’ve never really had out with you is the insistence on a supposedly loving God who can condemn someone to eternal punishment for mistakes made in life. It seems totally inconsistent.”

  “You’ve got the wrong idea - not surprising; it’s very common. Suffering, yes, but not punishment. More a natural consequence, in the same way as a hang-over after a binge. And the condemnation is by the person himself.”

  “What do you mean? It sounds nonsensical.”

  Brian accepted a refill of his glass and settled himself for a dissertation. “Hell, I think, is simply the state of rejecting a God who won’t force his company on those who ultimately decide they don’t want it.”

  This time Helen interrupted, “But surely no one would want to reject it.”

  “Don’t you believe it. Love - real love - is sometimes the most difficult thing in the world to accept. Believe me, I know. Eventually it means a total surrender, abandoning all the defences. And not everyone is willing to make it. With the best will in the world, it can take a lifetime’s effort. I couldn’t do it, not yet, not without a lot of help.”

  “Not even for the sake
of eternal happiness?”

  “It wouldn’t be happiness. For a soul clinging to its independence, the love of God would seem like a surgeon’s knife, more painful than the alternative.”

  “And what is that alternative, now we come back to it?”

  “The pain of frustration. Like sexual frustration (which is bad enough, heaven knows) but infinitely worse because it’s of the whole being, not just one specific function. A being intended for the company of God, and yet refusing it.”

  Anne broke the ensuing silence. “What about praying for the dead, then? I know some people think it’s worth while and others don’t. What good could that do?”

  “I suppose it could give a helpful nudge to someone who’s teetering on the edge, undecided in the last moments of consciousness whether to let go or not. Or it might ease the pain of doing so. After all, the pain comes from resisting the call of love.”

  Geoffrey snorted. “Anne’s talking about someone already dead.”

  “Don’t forget, these are matters of eternity. God isn’t limited by time. It’s all present to Him. There’s a story that Padre Pio was once found praying for a happy death for his father, who’d been gone for ten years.”

  “At that rate you might as well pray for the redemption of Adam - or Judas Iscariot.”

  “You can’t alter what’s already happened in the temporal order, of course, but prayer at any time will have been a factor in determining it. Not changing God’s mind - no one can do that, for all the anthropomorphism in a lot of the tales - but helping the poor weak humans who are involved. As for Adam, I don’t see why not. It hadn’t occurred to me, but it might not be a bad idea at that.”

  Helen thought of the names on the village war memorial, quite a few related to friends she had made in the area. “What about the services of remembrance? Do they do any real good?”

  “Remembrance pure and simple is no good to anyone; it just depresses the living. But there must be many a mental prayer during the two minutes’ silence. And C. S. Lewis said something about the courtesy of heaven being to take the best men know as better than they know. When someone is remembered with affection and gratitude, even by an unbeliever, I’m sure it will be taken as a kind of prayer. But good heavens, do we have to stay on such a gloomy subject? John, tell us about that exhibition you and Anne went to see today.”