‘You can’t leave anything alone can you?’ Suhami, her face frozen, had also got to her feet. ‘Anything kind or beautiful or good you have to drag down to your own poisonous level. I was happy here. Now you’ve ruined everything. I hate you… I hate you!’
Tim cried out in alarm and cowered in May’s lap. Christopher, grasping Suhami’s arm, said, ‘Don’t darling… please…don’t…’
The others crowded round them all talking at once. Suhami started to cry: ‘My birthday…on my birthday…’
Christopher stroked her hair, May stroked Tim’s hair and Ken and Heather swung shiny beams of bright-eyed sanctimony at Guy who stood at the far end of the table—spurned and despised like the plaguey inmate of some lazaretto.
Then, as the soothing babble abated, he became aware of an extraordinary quality in the ensuing silence. The group had pressed more closely together and gave the impression of being both excited and alarmed. Guy felt a cool draught on the back of his neck. He turned and saw a woman standing in the shadow of the open doorway.
Phantom-like she rested against the jamb. She was wrapped in draperies the colour of fog. A huge bunch of cellophaned, beribboned flowers depended from one hand. She moved forwards, slowly dragging in her wake huge swathes of silk and tafetta which shushed and hissed on the bare boards. Half way towards the others she came to a halt, pushing back the misty scarf. At the sight of her huge-eyed, deeply hollowed face and tumbling mass of clay-grey hair the group drew even closer.
Ken murmured in wonder and disbelief: ‘Hilarion’s prediction. It’s come true…’
The visitor looked round uncertainly and cleared her throat, making a sound like the rustle of dry leaves. ‘I rang the bell.’ A voice so timorous it was almost inaudible. She held out a square of green paper as if in support of such importunity. ‘I was invited.’
Guy, recognising the letter, gave a gasp of outrage and disbelief as he watched his wife, swaying like a narcolept, make for the nearest support, a low backed canvas chair. Reaching it she sank down, storm-cloud skirts billowing, and appeared overwhelmed with satisfaction at this simple feat.
Ken and Heather approached, praying hands to the fore. A few feet away they knelt down, foreheads touching the floor.
‘Greetings Astarte—Goddess of the Moon.’
‘Crescent Queen—lunar radiance.’
‘A thousand humble welcomes.’
Felicity stared at them and blinked. Then Suhami, pale with embarrassed recognition, said: ‘Mother?’ She crossed to the seated figure. ‘He said you couldn’t come.’
Guy winced at the dismissive impersonal pronoun. He watched Felicity’s blackberry lips shake with the effort of forming a reply. Instead she offered up the bouquet. Suhami took it, read the card and said: ‘How lovely—thank you.’
Guy recalled his own flowers forgotten in the porch, then realised that these were his flowers. Of all the barefaced gall! Nothing he could do now. To rush forward and claim them would appear petty in the extreme. Sylvie would think he had brought no gift at all. She was saying something else.
‘He told us you were ill.’
‘My dear,’ said May, ‘you are ill.’
Not her, thought Guy. Snowed-under or drunk as a skunk. Come down to gloat if things go wrong. Or throw a spanner in the works if they seem to be going right. Just look at them all clustering round. Like some bug-eyed natives in a Tarzan film creeping out of the jungle. Hail white god in iron bird from sky! Christ—what an evening.
‘You poor thing,’ continued May. ‘You look dreadful. Suhami—get your mother a drink.’
‘Oh, yes please,’ cried Felicity and heard her husband laugh. She caught his eye, her glance unfathomable. He saw it as triumphant and said, ‘You joined the living dead then, Felicity?’
‘There’s no need for all that.’ May produced a tiny plastic bottle from the pocket of her robe. ‘Your wife is quite distrait. Now—hold your hands so…’ She poured a few drops into Felicity’s cupped palms. ‘Inhale please.’
Felicity did and started to sneeze. May said, ‘Excellent,’ and ‘Could I have a napkin?’
Ken and Heather, still on the moony trail, crowded close to Felicity and asked her if she knew what day it was. Felicity, who hardly knew what year it was, attempted to shake her head. Suhami came along with the drink. Felicity put her hand out two or three times but made no connection. Heather said, ‘Astral space is different.’
May took the glass and folded Felicity’s fingers gently round it. Felicity drank a little then, mind and tongue finally synchronised, started to explain her late arrival. She sounded anxious and defensive as if such tardiness might cost a stack of Brownie points.
Everyone said: ‘Never mind—it really doesn’t matter,’ and ‘Super that you’re here at all.’
They were getting used to her. Arno, closing the front door, found a pigskin case and brought it in.
Guy was right, of course, in thinking Felicity was not ill. The fact was that she had taken a line just before leaving home and a second in the car. Normally things went better with coke. You got a spiralling zing of light and airy confidence wafting you up on a stairway to Paradise. High-kicking the glitter dust en route to the stars.
But this time the reverse had happened. Felicity was experiencing a monstrously exaggerated sense of her own vulnerability. She felt like one of those poor soft-shelled creatures washed up by an ebbing tide and left dying on the sands. She shrank from the figures looming over her. They had hot stretchy eyes and rubbery mouths and kept changing their shapes. One reached out and touched her, and Felicity howled in terror.
Guy said: ‘Bloody hell,’ and they all turned on him again.
Just over an hour had passed since the dramatic advent of Felicity’s arrival. The first course had been cleared away to make way for an egg custard and Suhami’s birthday cake. The latter was a square ‘cider’ cake made by Janet with apple juice and soya marzipan. It had an ‘S’-shaped candle and a frill of recycled sludge-green toilet paper.
Nine people sat down for dessert. May had withdrawn in preparation for her regression but Trixie had been persuaded to join the company. This had been achieved partly through Janet’s persistent keyhole-cajoling and also by her cunning stimulation of Trixie’s curiosity. Janet, knowing Trixie’s passion for clothes, had dwelt long and inventively on the dazzling spectral beauty of Felicity’s evening dress. She had also, instinctively feeling it would please, described the row with Suhami and Guy’s subsequent discomfiture.
Trixie had not meant to come out till he had gone for good. Crouched in her room in a sweating funk, she had pictured a thousand times Guy’s fury on discovering the loss of his Trinitron. In each subsequent recreation he became a little angrier and more violent so that, by now, she was braced for him to come tramping up the stairs bellowing ‘Fee Fi Fo Fum,’ smash her door down and eat her alive.
Then, when Janet said he hadn’t changed for dinner, Trixie began to entertain the hope that he might not yet have noticed the pills’ disappearance. And even if he had would he wish to upset Suhami further by causing another scene? Also (and this is when she decided to go down), what was to stop her saying she knew nothing about the matter? No one could prove otherwise. Certainly the things couldn’t be produced for she had thrown them out of the taxi window in guilty panic. So now here she was, sipping a little bullace supreme, gazing emerald-with-envy at the dress and occasionally sliding an apprehensive glance down the table at Guy. Eventually she caught his eye and received such a grotesquely false smile and vigorous wave that she wished she had not.
Christopher was talking. Telling them all about his last assignment (a documentary on Afghanistan), and the endless troubled trekking in the Chagai Hills, when a soft booming sound like a foghorn out to sea was heard.
Heather said, ‘The conch,’ and turned to Felicity adding kindly, ‘we have to go.’
Ken and Heather had by now reluctantly accepted Felicity’s corporeity whilst still regarding her a
s ‘sent’ in some mysterious and omened way. Since May had left the table, Heather had taken charge: filling Felicity’s mug (half warm goat’s milk, half Acorna) and also, from the overflowing goodness of her heart, doing some discreet counselling. A homely blend of psychological uplift, astrological prediction and tips on recycling negative vibrations. Felicity had listened with an expression of intent seriousness on her sleepwalker’s face, interrupting only to clap her hands when the cake was cut.
‘Come along then.’ Heather helped her up.
‘Where?’
‘We’re going to the Solar. You’ll see the Master. Won’t that be nice?’
‘Yes,’ said Felicity, screwing up her eyes in an attempt to discover precisely where the edge of the table was. ‘Will there be dancing?’
‘Spaced out,’ said Ken, taking the other arm. He added in an aside, ‘Picture the Bangladeshis that dress would feed.’
The others were already moving off. Trixie laughing, talking loudly, linking arms with a surprised but delighted Janet. Suhami with Christopher who was carrying her bag and Tim who stopped in the hall to gaze entranced at the lantern and refused to move until Suhami promised he could come back afterwards. Guy wandered alone, somewhere beyond the pale.
Arno, noticing this, overcame his natural aversion and joined the man, introducing himself. He even held out his hand but with such an air of brave and self-conscious resolution that Guy looked for a lion tamer’s chair in its fellow.
Arno. What sort of name was that? Neither one thing nor the other. Like one of those far-flung islands that turned up in the shipping forecasts. Force 9 gales in Ross, Arno and Cromarty. Guy ignored the hand, saying coldly, ‘You’ve got custard on your beard.’ Then he defiantly produced a Zino Anniversaire, the baguette of the cigar world, and lit up.
The Solar was at the far end of the gallery. A long room with high beams and a floor of black bitumen. Placed upon it in two impeccably straight rows and precisely equidistant were twenty-four large, thinnish cushions in loose covers of coarse bleached cotton. These parallel lines directed the eye to a small dais raised on three steps and covered in oatmeal tweed carpet. There was a chair on the dais with a carved back and at the foot of this a small collection of objects: the conch shell, a little brass gong and a much larger wooden fish so highly polished that the scales gleamed like a caramel toffee. As it was getting dark, the light—concealed inside a low hanging paper lantern—was switched on.
The Master, wearing white, was already in situ, resting on the carved chair. Tim ran across the room and curled up at his feet. The rest disposed themselves either sitting on the steps or standing behind the enthroned sage.
Guy was relieved to find he was not once more expected to squat on a cushion. He turned to look at Craigie who was welcoming Felicity with a smile of concerned sweetness. Noting the man’s fragile looks and snowy hair veiling his stooped shoulders, Guy marvelled at his own previous gullibility. How could he have been taken in, even briefly, by such an obvious poseur? Now, seeing that everyone was settled, Craigie was picking up the fish. He parted its widely hinged jaws and brought them together with a loud clack.
May appeared in the doorway. She was wearing a plain mauve linen shift and had removed all her jewellery save for a silver unicorn pendant. Her broad feet were bare and her hair, unbound and brushed smooth, hung almost to her waist. She walked towards them in a slow, very measured way—carrying herself tall and straight as if balancing an invisible amphora.
On the floor, in between the furthest six cushions and about ten feet from the dais, an appliquéd quilt had been spread out. May lay down on this, assuming a sacred expression, and folded her arms across her breasts. Then after a moment she sat up again.
‘Actually, I got a bit cold last time in that Viking longboat. Do you think I could have my little pelerine? It’s in my bag.’
On the platform Christopher reached down.
Suhami said sharply, ‘That’s mine.’
‘Of course it is. Sorry.’
‘Over by the door,’ called May.
Christopher collected May’s bag and took it to her, opening it as he went, pulling out a cream ribbed cape. ‘Is this the thing?’ He placed it round her shoulders where it lay in little folds like uncooked tripe.
May said, ‘Splendid,’ and tied the fastening. Then she lay back again, her dark eyes closed, and started to breathe deeply, pushing the magnificent cupolas beneath her shift up into the stratosphere. Arno gave a stifled moan of enchantment and was glad when the Master said ‘Lights’ and, hurrying to the switch, he was temporarily distracted.
‘Shall I stay here, May?’ asked Christopher, squatting by her left shoulder. ‘Then I can hold your hand if things get sticky.’
‘If you wish but I’ll be quite all right. One always returns safely you know.’
Once the light was out everything looked different. In the greyness the unmoving figures became drained of their humanity. They looked mysterious, their edges ill-defined, like statues in the garden at dusk. May’s breathing became more audible; deep regular sighs with a longer and longer pause between each exhalation.
When the Master wanted to know if she was ready, May replied on a sonorous note: ‘I Am Ready.’ Next she was asked to locate the very centre of her being and, after several more slow and even deeper breaths, laid the flat of her hand on her tummy.
‘How do you see that centre?’
‘A ball…a golden ball.’
‘Can you propel that ball down? Down…and out through the soles of your feet…that’s right—push it away…’ May gave a small grunt. ‘Now bring it back and push upwards…’
May propelled the very centre of her being up and down, further and further away each time until it had expanded from a little ball to a great shimmering golden skin pressing against the walls like a giant helium balloon. Then, released, it suddenly floated free. Briefly May glanced down, seeing the twisty chimney pots and mossy slates of the Manor House roof and then she was off. Over the hills, over the clouds and far far away.
‘Where are you now, May?’
Where indeed? Below her things were changing fast. The terrain was now rough and wild. Forests and large areas of scrubland. Then some circles of tents within a high stone wall.
‘Tell us what you see?’
Descending, the tents became larger. One was rather grand. Bigger than all the others and flying a pennant, purple and gold. An eagle rising.
‘What is inside the tent?’
A pair of wooden pattens materialised, tied with strips of rag on to filthy masculine feet and raising them from the earth. In the right hand of the owner of the feet was a lump of dripping meat.
The place stank of sizzling fat, spilt wine and burning pitch from the torches. There was the most tremendous row going on. Men were yelling at each other, laughing, shouting. Dogs snarled, fighting over bones. Somewhere in the middle of it all a singer, accompanying himself on a small drum, struggled to make his lyrics heard.
The reeking air made the General’s taster sick. He put the bear flesh into his mouth, chewed on the sinews, forced it down then placed the remains on a metal dish. A new skin of wine had just been uncorked and he swallowed some of that. The General’s slave, a very young blackamoor, took the plate and goblet and placed them at the end of a line of similar dishes all rapidly congealing on a stone slab. The General never had hot food (not all poisons being quick to take effect, time must be allowed). On the other hand he was still alive.
The General was finishing sheep’s kidneys now. Belching, farting, wiping his greasy fingers on the negro boy’s woolly hair, tossing back some wine. Aping his betters he rested on his right elbow. His rough tunic was in disarray and everyone could see his knickers made from the hide of his favourite stallion and gleaming like wood chestnuts.
Mushrooms came next. The taster hated all forms of fungus. It was well known that some varieties were deadly and although these had mostly been isolated (thanks to various self-s
acrificing predecessors), the odd one could still slip through. In which case the lives of both the cook and the taster would be forfeit. But the General loved them, believing that they made him potent in love and invincible in battle.
The mushrooms were stewing in a small four-legged bronze skillet, their juice a vivid unpleasant colour. The taster put a single stalk and a spoonful of the violet liquid in his mouth. Immediately he choked. The muscles of his throat became numb, his stiff coal-black tongue stuck out. Eyes bolting, he fell and upset the skillet, scalding his arms on a steaming mass of food.
He briefly comprehended startled faces and the slave running, then paralysis spread downwards to his chest and life closed up inside him like a fan.
‘May…May…’ The words were knotted with terror as Arno heard the strangled choking. He was first from the dais, flinging himself on his knees at her side. Other people followed, crowding round. Even Felicity, looking dreamily puzzled rather than alarmed, drifted over to glance down at the figure wrenching itself into such terrible loops and arches on the appliquéd quilt.
‘Do something!’ cried Arno. ‘Someone…do something…’ He snatched May’s hand from Christopher’s grasp and started to chafe and rub it between his own.
‘Give her the kiss of life.’
‘She’s not drowning.’
‘How do you know she’s not drowning?’
‘Shouldn’t we loosen her belt?’
‘Look at her face!’
‘Take the pillow away. Lay her flat.’
‘She can’t breathe as it is.’
‘Ken’s right. That’ll just make things worse.’
‘We need some agrimony.’
‘I’d have thought there was more than enough agrimony here already.’
‘Remarks like that are not particularly helpful, Mr Gamelin.’
Death in Disguise Page 13