by Peter Watson
‘I think I remember. So that was you, was it?’
‘At the end of the campaign I was in Washington when that aeroplane crashed on take-off. If you remember, it plunged into a river. I took a taxi to the bridge and photographed survivors swimming in the waters. It was very dramatic and after that the paper did offer me a job.’
She drained what was left of her wine.
‘To begin with it was a disappointment – photographing people being interviewed, party political conferences – faces, faces, faces. But then, when President Marcos was forced out of the Philippines, I was sent there for weeks. That was exciting. I must have done well because I started to work abroad much more. Ethiopia, Korea, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, China once. And, inevitably, the Middle East.’
Michael noticed that Isobel’s fingers were wrapped tightly around her fork as she dug its prongs into the tablecloth. He refilled her glass.
‘By then I had teamed up – emotionally, I mean – with one of the foreign correspondents from another paper who often worked on the same stories as I did. He worked for a Sunday. We were both sent to Beirut. It was very dangerous then – I’m talking about a few years ago now. People were being abducted all the time and you never went anywhere alone.
‘Well, Tony did. He left the hotel one night without telling me, without telling anyone. Something you just didn’t do. He must have had a tip-off of some sort.’ She swallowed some wine. ‘I say “must have” because we never knew.’ She looked at Michael. ‘Tony was never seen again. Never seen and never heard from. No body was ever found. There were all sorts of rumours – that the Druze had got him, or the Iranians. Or that he was really a British spy and the Syrians had taken him out. I never knew what to believe. To begin with I thought he would be released eventually. I stayed in Beirut for a while but after a month the paper, though understanding, wanted me to go somewhere else on another story. That felt as though I was abandoning Tony, so I left the paper instead and lived in Beirut as a freelance.’
‘That was brave.’
‘After a year there was still no news of him. I didn’t know what to do. If there had been a body then at least I would have been able to grieve – but there wasn’t. He wasn’t there, I missed him terribly but I couldn’t even say goodbye. After another month or so I received a letter from his parents, saying I should give up and come home, that I’d done enough. It was a terrible wrench and I felt like a traitor. The one tribute I could pay him, if he was dead, and maybe even if he wasn’t, was to give up journalism, just as he had been forced to give it up. I’d lost a lot of my appetite anyway. I went back to the farm, and, I suppose, moped for a while. Then Pa died. Mercifully, that was quick – a heart attack – and having to look after the place by myself has certainly kept me occupied.’
‘And have you grieved for Tony yet?’
‘I don’t know. There’s been no focus. I can’t believe he’s dead but I don’t think he’s alive, either. I don’t talk to him any more – inside my head I mean, as I used to – I haven’t put him behind me yet. I’ve been out with other men a few times, but it was like flying a plane on a simulator. It wasn’t for real.’
Michael spoke softly. ‘Look, you don’t have to go on. I didn’t realise my question would be so painful. I’m sorry.’
‘No. No. Funnily enough it’s rather comforting to talk about it. I never have before.’ She gave him a rather sad smile. ‘Tony smoked cigars.’
A waiter came and took away their plates. Michael toyed with the idea of a cigar but thought, just this once, that he’d wait. The waiter set the coffee-cups in front of them.
‘It’s been a grim three years, frankly,’ Isobel went on. ‘I think I told you that my father was not a serious money-maker. But I hadn’t realised that things were quite so bad. He had a large mortgage. That was paid off with his death, of course, but the interest payments had prevented him from modernising. On top of that he had never been able to afford to leave any of our land fallow so that it was not producing as well as it should.’
Suddenly, she shot him a blinding smile, not sad at all this time. ‘Are you sure you want to hear all this?’
‘And photography? Did you ever go back to that?’
She shook her head. ‘All my things, all my photos of Tony, the box of cigars he left in his hotel room, are locked away at the paper I worked for, where I can’t stumble across them.’ She drank some coffee. ‘You’ve no idea how I felt that day you told me about the mystery of the painting. It has offered the first chance in three years for me to get away from the farm.’ She bit her lip. ‘Every time it has looked like coming to a full stop, my heart has been in my mouth.’ She tossed back her hair with a shake of her head. ‘To be honest, I couldn’t face going back to the farm just yet.’
She sat back and, Michael judged, had talked as much as she wanted to. He suggested a game of cards but she surprised him by saying she preferred chess. They moved back into the bar and he soon saw why: she beat him easily.
‘This is one thing I have been doing, these last three years. You can play yourself and improve – that’s one of its attractions.’
They went to bed at about 11.15.
‘One thought,’ said Isobel, her fingers gripping the handle of her bedroom door. ‘If Molyneux stole all those pamphlets, that must mean he’s certain he’s being followed. I didn’t fool him at all yesterday. We’ve lost our one advantage. Oh Michael, I’m sorry.’
Chapter Six
Next morning the rain clouds had gone, sunshine splashed along Dorchester High Street and what puddles were left shimmered like sheets of bitumen. After an early breakfast – a ‘Thomas Hardy Special’ of ‘Egdon Eggs’ and ‘Brockhampton Buns’ – Isobel and Michael drove across to Godwin Magna for the third time. Raindrops were still trapped in the hedgerows and sparkled like a thousand silver spoons. Michael opened the sun-roof and put Delius on the tape deck.
‘What’s this?’ asked Isobel.
‘Brigg Fair.’
‘Summer morning music.’
‘To begin with, yes. All Delius ends in tragedy. He knew things didn’t last.’ Michael smiled at her. He felt good, and Isobel also seemed easier, as if the rain storms, or their dinner conversation, had taken away some of her stiffness. On the back seat of the car were stacked all the reference books they had brought with them, just in case. And a box of Havanas that Michael had bought before they left The Yeoman.
At Godwin Magna the copper beeches were ablaze in sunshine. The church was open and Michael and Isobel hurried forward to the chapel. Michael had with him the photograph of the painting and, once they were installed within the chapel, took it out.
After a moment, he murmured, ‘No, I don’t get it. Do you?’
‘Let’s be systematic,’ said Isobel. ‘We don’t know what the window design was, and until we go back to the British Museum, we can’t know. So let’s assume that we were referred to the window for the most natural of reasons – to look through it. Why don’t you climb on that ledge and see what the view is.’
He did as she suggested. It wasn’t too difficult to climb from pew to window-sill. Balancing as best he could, he described what he saw. ‘The cemetery, of course. A line of trees . . . I can see some poplars beyond the oaks. Fields beyond that, then a dip or valley that I can’t see into. The ground rises beyond that – and I think there’s a village up the slope. The trees are in the way, though. There are hardly any houses you can see.’ He got down.
‘Now let’s go back to the books,’ said Isobel.
They returned to the car. Michael leaned against the boot and lit a cigar. He had not had a chance to follow up his discovery of the night before, that the tiny animal at the foot of the ghostly figure who was the next clue was either Prudence or Cerberus. He plumped for Prudence first. He shook his head when he found it. ‘Prudence was a three-headed monster but with human heads. Not ours.’ He turned to Cerberus. ‘Now that’s more like it. Listen to this: “In Greek mythology, Cerberus was a m
any-headed dog, commonly with three heads and perhaps with a serpent’s tail. He was the guardian of the entrance to Hades, the underworld, in both classical and Christian themes. He sometimes accompanies Pluto.”’ Isobel began to turn the pages of her book but Michael said, ‘Don’t bother. I do know about some classical gods. Pluto was the god of Hades, the underworld.’ He held his cigar downwind of Isobel.
‘I’ve just thought. Could the underworld refer to the undercroft of the church, do you think?’ said Isobel.
Michael looked across to the church. ‘It might have had an undercroft at one point, I suppose, but I doubt it. We know that the Goodwin/Cross chapel has been here for centuries and there’s no sign of any rebuilding. The vicar didn’t mention it. That sort of thing might be mentioned in the church pamphlet, of course. I could stone Molyneux for stealing them!’ He looked at Isobel. ‘Can you face going back into Dorchester yet again? The library must have the church pamphlet and other documents on the building. If there was an undercroft that’s the only way to find out without making the vicar suspicious.’
She shrugged. ‘As I said last night, I’m not ready to go back to the farm just yet.’
Michael turned the 190 and they set off back to Dorchester. Isobel sat with the photograph of the painting in her lap. Occasionally she looked out at the countryside. Orchards flashed by: apple and pear trees. It was the end of the blossom and the leaves looked as though they had been tied on to the branches with ribbon. ‘Tell me,’ said Isobel after a while, ‘was it this figure of Pluto that convinced you the painting wasn’t by Holbein? Is that what your friend Cobbold, at the National Gallery, said?’
‘Not at all. It was the subject matter, and the general quality. Why do you ask?’
‘It’s so badly drawn, don’t you think? Not only is his cloak vague, but he’s much less well formed than the others. The hands are ghostly, the face is cadaverous. It’s almost as if the painter wasn’t very interested in the character – careful! Why are you stopping?’
Michael was braking hard. He pulled the car off the road near a gate at the side of the lane. He put on the handbrake, snatched the photograph from Isobel and studied it for a moment. Then he looked up at her, grabbed her hand and kissed it. ‘Brilliant,’ he said. ‘Hallebloodylulah! You don’t have to go back to the farm just yet.’
‘Michael! Give me back my hand. What have I said? Tell me!’
He pointed at the photograph, at the first figure, of Mercury or Philip Cross. ‘You learn fast, thank God. Zero to zoom, in no time. Look at how well Mercury was drawn. Fantastic detail, his tunic with those flames, his medallions so we could know which Order it was, his facial features and hair so accurate we could recognise the likeness from another picture. Why? Because, as we now know, he was important in himself, the gold-card character – Philip Cross. Now ask yourself why, as you just said, Pluto is so badly drawn, flimsy and dull-looking? Because he’s not important in himself!
‘Now ask yourself about Pluto’s function – king of the underworld. Isn’t that drawing attention to the over-world – the part of the painting above Pluto? Remember, too, what the vicar said, about stained-glass windows: they are read from the bottom up. I knew that but had forgotten it.’ Michael was looking excited, almost bouncing in his seat. ‘Now put all that together. Pluto himself isn’t important, not directly, but read up, above him, like in a stained-glass window, a Jesse window. What is there above Pluto in our picture?’
‘A window.’
‘More than that, Isobel. Come on, look at it again. It is the only window in the painting. It opens on to the landscape, with buildings in the distance. What clinches it is the shape of the window. Look at it, tall and thin–’
‘You mean–’
‘Yes. It’s the same shape as the Jesse window in Godwin Magna church.’
Isobel was growing excited now, as Michael’s argument began to convince her. ‘But . . . you said you could hardly see any buildings when you looked out of the window.’
Michael pointed to some lines on the painting, in the window. ‘Those are branches of trees, right? With no leaves. I keep noticing things about this painting that I hadn’t noticed before. Look, the landscape seen through the window is a winter landscape, whereas all the rest, over here by the river, is a summer landscape. See?’
Isobel nodded.
‘In other words, what we are being told is that these buildings are probably visible from the window only in winter. But it should be easy enough to find them – if they still exist, of course. Remember, I did say there seemed to be a village beyond the trees, at the other side of the valley? The buildings in the picture must have been there once. Let’s hope they still are. There can’t be many medieval buildings still standing.’
Michael reached into the glove compartment and took out the book of maps. He scrabbled through the pages until he came to Godwin Magna. ‘Here we are. Now, the Jesse window is in the north wall of the church . . . so the village we want is even further north, across a valley . . . That’s it, Higher Lewell. We can get there if we take the next right.’ He passed Isobel the book of maps, quickly put the car into gear, and they moved off.
They found the road to the right and descended into a valley. Beech and ash trees crowded the lane, throwing green shadows, like smoke, across the road. They crossed a narrow stone bridge, wet with pelts of moss, and ascended again. As they reached the crest of the hill they came out into the sun. On the road ahead, black flecks of melting tar glistened like toffee. Their spirits had rapidly revived.
Higher Lewell was an even smaller village than Godwin Magna. It boasted a row of houses, a post office, shop and garage all rolled into one, a pub, the Chalk and Cheese, and the village’s only claim to fame: its ruin. This was located at the far end of the row of houses and within sight of the pub.
Michael drew up the car near a green notice-board which announced that the ruin was, or had been, Lewell Monastery. Before he got out of the car he looked again at the photograph of the painting.
‘This is getting easier,’ he said. ‘Look at that next figure. He’s dressed as a monk. Besides the fact that he is carrying the gospels, he also has three knots tied in the rope round his waist. Even I know that signifies him as a Franciscan.’ He pointed at the green board. ‘And, as that board says clearly, this is, or was, a Franciscan monastery. Let’s have a look round – but bring the photograph. We’ll need it.’
They got out and followed a path into the ruins. There were the remains of a chapel – most of the walls but no roof – a cloister, a walled garden where the monks had grown fruit, and some small dark rooms which, they read on a board, had been cider breweries.
They also read on the main board that Lewell had once been one of a thriving community of monasteries in the area – Shilling and Monksilver were others, said the notice – which had specialised in ancient forms of medicine, as well as brewing. The monasteries had all thrived, commercially and spiritually, until the middle of the sixteenth century, when they had been abolished and their assets seized.
‘Let me look at the picture again,’ said Michael.
Isobel passed it to him.
The next figure after the monk was an old man, with a long beard. He had a pole and a kind of boat. Behind him could just be made out what appeared to be a bird with a human face. At his feet was the map of the True Cross. ‘Here we go again,’ said Michael. ‘I think another session with the books is called for. I haven’t a clue who this next character is.’
‘Well,’ said Isobel. ‘Now that the weather has changed there’s no need to go back to the hotel. Why don’t we find a nice secluded spot in the corner of a field and do our research in style?’
‘That’s the second best idea you’ve had today,’ replied Michael. ‘After spotting Pluto’s lack of substance, I mean.’
They grinned at each other and returned to the car. ‘Look,’ said Isobel as they were getting in. ‘There’s a sign along there saying “Public footpath”. Why don’t
we see where it leads?’
So, each taking a couple of reference books, they locked up the Mercedes and made off. The footpath cut across some fields until it reached a small beech wood. The beech leaves, shiny on one side, powdery on the other, intercepted the sunlight, perforating it into a thousand silver battens. As they came out at the other side of the wood a broad vista of rolling fields opened up before them, acrid yellow acres of rape, dusty green patches of unripe wheat or barley, and, above, a straight white furrow chalked by an aeroplane in the sky.
‘Here suit you?’ said Michael.
‘Perfect, I can do my first sunbathing of the year.’ To Michael’s consternation, Isobel then set down her raincoat, took off her shoes, and hiked her skirt well above her knees. Her legs were not disappointing.
He had brought a blanket from the car and now rolled it out. He invited Isobel to choose her spot, then flopped down himself next to her, turning his back on her legs. He took out a cigar and lit it.
‘Where the hell do we start?’ she said to the fields in general. ‘We can’t look up “man” or “old man”, or “beard”.’
‘Styx.’
She looked at him. ‘Sticks?’
‘We didn’t only do Elgar at school. I’m sure this figure is the ferryman of the classical world, the old man who shipped souls across to the underworld. I’ve forgotten his name but I remember the river was called Styx.’ He spelled it out.
But after a minute, Isobel said, ‘No, nothing under Styx here.’
‘Nor here . . . try Hades.’
Another silence, save for the birds quarrelling above them in the sky.
Isobel held up her hand to shield the page from the sun. ‘“To the Greeks, Hades was a grey region inhabited by ghosts; it was also the name of the god who ruled the underworld. The entrance to Hades is guarded by the three-headed watchdog, Cerberus” – that we already knew, right? – “and it is located on the further shore of the River Styx, or the Acheron, across which the souls of the dead are ferried. Mercury, in the role of psychopomp, the conductor of souls, leads the spirits of the dead down to Hades from earth above . . .” No, everything but the name we are looking for. I’ll look up Cerberus–’