The rap came again. May put her lips to the door frame. ‘Master - we’re awaiting dinner.’
‘We’ll come back to this, Mr Gamelin. Please don’t be alarmed. Something can be worked out.’
Behind this impeccably courteous response Guy sensed that his reaction had caused amusement, and he resented it. What man in his right mind would not be alarmed at the thought of half of a million smackers disappearing from the family vaults! Loathsome though the McFaddens might be, their money was still as good as anybody else’s. He struggled to his feet and all his previous displeasure at being forced into such an undignified posture returned. Craigie did not move. ‘Aren’t you coming?’
‘I eat at twelve.’
‘Only then?’ You must get very hungry.’
‘Not at all.’ There was a withdrawing of attention that was almost palpable. A folding-in. Guy could have been in an empty room. ‘And now you must excuse me. I need to rest.’
In a massive tailback on the M4, Felicity’s hired car rested motionless between a much-welded Cortina and a BMW. The man in the executive job had stapled his finger to the horn. Felicity slipped off her shoe and gave the dividing panel a sharp crack with its rhinestoned heel. The driver jumped and showed a nervous profile.
He’d been keeping an eye on her since just after they’d left Belgravia. In fact, if he’d any choice in the matter, he wouldn’t have picked her up at all. Not only did she look like Vincent Price’s bit on the side, but she’d also been acting most peculiarly. Constantly pulling her scarf off then winding it back on, humming, waving through the window. He eased the sheet of toughened glass aside.
‘I told your firm I had to be there at half past seven.’
‘Can’t help the traffic, Mrs Gamelin.’
‘You should have come earlier.’
‘I came the time I was booked to come.’
‘But they should have known what it would be like.’ They’d had this conversation many times. He kept a weary silence. ‘The letter said half past seven to eat at eight, you see. The Manor House, Compton Dandon. It’s terribly important.’
No need to tell him the address. It was tattooed on his brain. She’d hardly stopped repeating it since getting into the cab. He’d also got it written down.
‘Can’t you pull out or something and overtake?’
The driver smiled, nodded and closed the panel, noticing with some trepidation that she kept the shoe in her hand.
‘Further to our earlier discussion, Mr Gamelin ...’
Guy, once more tacking after May along the corridor, did not hear. He was struggling to regain his sense of self which had mysteriously, subtly, been first fractured then destroyed in that quiet room. My God he thought - if I could learn to do that. What a weapon it would be!
‘I have a colour workshop in September. Still a few places left.’
Craigie - that frail and near-silent man - was a magician. A trickster. That must be it. What other explanation could there be? All this talk of goodness and spiritual intoxication was absolute balls. A cloak of benign mysticism concealing a secret imperator. As for this pretence of not accepting Sylvie’s money. A brilliant bluff. Guy was not unfamiliar with brinkmanship but had never seen a move so close to the edge. Quite breathtaking! As was this arranged ‘consultation’ with her parents. Set up purely to reinforce Craigie’s pose of selfless affection. The clever sod. Father figure. I’ll give him fucking father figure! He doesn’t know who he’s taken on. He doesn’t know he’s born. By the time they reached the dining room, Guy was completely himself again.
There seemed to be an awful lot of people. They were all seated at a long table. One or two wore expressions of suffering restraint. Guy supposed he should apologise for keeping them waiting, reasoned that it wasn’t really his fault, but thought it might annoy Sylvie if he didn’t - so he mumbled a few conciliatory words in their general direction.
‘I expect you’d like a drink.’
May was leading him to an armoire on which were two glass jugs. One full to the brim with dark pink liquid the other, half-empty, held something pondy green. Working on the principle that the natives always know best. Guy inclined towards the latter.
‘Now,’ said May with a conjurer’s wave at the jugs. ‘Which is it to be?’
‘Whichever’s strongest.’
‘The bullace is bursting with silenium. On the other hand, with turnip top you have a smidgen of iodine, quite a lot of vitamin C and a good thrust of manganese.’
‘I meant strongest in alcohol.’
‘Oh dear.’ She gave his arm an understanding pat. ‘Are you desperate for a fix? That explains the auric slippage. Don’t worry,’ filling a stone beaker, ‘it’s never too late. I had an alcoholic here a few months ago. Couldn’t stand up when he arrived. I gave him a dowsing with the pendulum, working him over with the violet ray of Arturus, gee’d up his chakras and taught him the salute to the sun. Do you know where that man is today?’
Guy realised he’d left his hip flask in the car. He followed his hostess, sipping at the green liquid. The stuff tasted better than it looked but it was close. He was delighted to see an empty chair next to Sylvie but, veering towards that section of the table, he was skilfully deflected by May who popped him into quite a different chair, taking the other place herself.
He started to call after her, ‘Can’t I sit ...’ when he was interrupted by a woman on his right.
‘We always keep the same seat. It’s a little way we have here. A little discipline. You are in the visitor’s place.’
Guy stared at her with some dislike. A receding chin, long greying hair held back by an Alice band, eyes bulging with sincerity. She was wearing a T-shirt declaring: ‘Universal Mind: The Only Choice’ and no bra. Her breasts, huge with big nipples, sagged nearly to her waist. The man sitting opposite her on Guy’s right hand (for he was at the end of the table) had on a shepherd’s smock. He passed Guy a plate of cow pats.
‘Barley cake?’
‘Why not.’
Guy took two, forced a smile and looked over the rest of the food. A dismal sight. More jugs of Château Ponderosa, torpedoes of bread spattered with blackish-brown gravel and a dish of gluey-looking stuff in which a metal spoon stood upright as if in a state of shock.
Guy thought gloomily of the dinner menu in his room at Chartwell Grange. Pan-fried Thwaite Shad nestling on a bed of Almond Rice bedecked with Dawn-gathered English Mushrooms and Tiny New Potatoes. This divine assemblage to be followed by either a Chariot of Crisp Cox’s Orange Pippins, Hearty Fenland Celery or Tarte Judy according to the consumer’s inclination and stamina. No doubt Furneaux was at this very moment cutting a swathe. The things I do for love, thought Guy - glancing towards his daughter, hoping for a smile.
Sylvie was wrapped in a beautiful apple-green and rosemadder sari. With her grave young face newly imprinted by a shiny dot and her dusky anchorite’s hair, she seemed to him like a child strangely cast in a school play. He could not credit that she genuinely believed all this quasi-religious tommyrot. She was sitting next to a youth with long dark hair who was addressing her with quiet intimacy, sometimes whispering into her ear. Perhaps this was the ‘marvellous man’ for whom she had left London. If so, he seemed to have got a head start.
Guy noted his falsely tender smile. Plainly a fortune-hunter. The poor girl was surrounded by them, bloody vultures. He did not recognise the paradox in the assumption that his child, beloved by him for herself alone, must be beloved of others only by reason of her presumed inheritance.