These few words seemed to exhaust her but she murmured something else before rolling her head away again. It sounded like ‘chaos’.
‘Our Master used to say that there is an order within apparent disorder, and I’m sure that is true. Just be still my dear and quiet, and all the mud - all the unhappiness - will settle and things will become clear and bright. You have lost your way Felicity, but together we will find it again.’
Felicity lay back on the pillow, her hand resting in May’s. Gradually she felt stealing over her a most delicious lethargy. Her limbs felt so heavy they might have been melting through the mattress. May’s voice came and went: deep, rhythmical and soothing like the ocean’s tide. Felicity slept.
Arno was pulling radishes for a side salad, stopping sometimes to wave encouragingly to Christopher who was tying up runner beans at the far end of the garden. The radishes were poor forked things quite unlike the glowing crimson globes promised by the seed packet. One of them was covered in little scales and plainly destined for the bonfire. He tried to arrange the rest on a wooden plate brought out expressly for the purpose, but no matter how he turned them they always finished whiskery-side upmost and looking faintly rude.
He had been attempting, as a way of keeping his mind off sorrowful things, to compose another haiku but it was not to his satisfaction. Aware that nothing would ever be good enough this last one, (‘Tumultuous heart, requiescat in pace, on the breast of your slave’) seemed especially inept. It even omitted his adored one’s name.
He had hardly seen her today. He understood. Felicity’s need was great. Anyone could see that she had been very ill. But Arno’s heart was heavy, too. He had said his prayers before going to sleep and on rising, but not with any hope of comfort and certainly with no sense of homage. More out of habit really, because once he had promised his mother he always would. Never forget, she used to tell him, that Jesus loves you. Personally he’d never felt this and, even if it had been true, would have gained little consolation - for who wanted to be loved by someone who loved everybody? And then only because it was their job.
This attention-drift brought him back to the Master’s death from which his thoughts had briefly strayed. How utterly dreadful it had been. And how changed they now were. No one put this into words. No one looked squarely into another’s face and said: ‘You are quite changed’. But it was true. Arno could not describe precisely how. But people seemed somehow ... smaller. Their humanness a shade diffused, their benevolence slippier, their vitality diminished. Perhaps this was what that poem meant. ‘Any man’s death ...’
Arno pinched himself. His Zen awareness seemed to have quite vanished over the last forty-eight hours. He was living not in the moment but in the near and dreadful past, the image of his dying teacher frozen on the retina. The constant comings and goings of the police distracted and alarmed him. Yesterday they’d searched the house. Today they’d been again, taking away all sorts of tea towels. Arno was especially concerned on Tim’s behalf. When frightened, who knew what the boy would say? That chief inspector, surprisingly brief and restrained though the manner of his questioning had been, looked like the sort to try again.
Heather caught Arno’s eye, not for the first time. Over the last hour she had ballooned up and down the drive at least three times. Arno thought at first this was part of her daily work-out until he noticed that she stepped outside on to the pavement, scanning the High Street between each run. Perhaps something had happened since he left the house. A development in the case. If so, it was his duty to hurry back. How reluctant he was to do this. Somehow, out in the sunshine, things looked fractionally less appalling. Reasoning that he’d soon be called if needed, Arno turned back to his vegetables and so missed the cream car swinging through the Manor House gates.
Ken and Heather had got ready at some length for the Daily Pitch, aware that there might be photographers and that it was their duty as representatives of the Golden Windhorse to look their very best.
Thankfully Hilarion had given a positively radiated blessing on the project. Indeed the great chohan had been not only unequivocal in his support but also generous with his explanations. Zedekial must know that, on the other side, the word ‘money’ was solidly anchored in the pink, atomic cellular light of manifest neutrality. Put simply, the stuff could be used for good or ill. Naturally as Pan-earthed cosmics, he and Tethys could be entrusted to fulfil the latter part creatively.
Once this detail had been tidied away, the Beavers had discussed the situation at great length, mainly from the possible viewpoint of the other residents. Eventually, regretfully, they had come to the conclusion that their willingness to touch pitch, even on behalf of another, was fraught with the possibility of being misunderstood. This perception grasped, the next brief step (from virtue to pragmatism) was quickly taken. They decided that their sacrifice on behalf of Suhami should remain a secret. After all wasn’t it in the Bible - the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing? The upshot of all this prosing was that Ken and Heather decided it would be wiser to take their long spoons and sup with the devil elsewhere.
Which is how Heather came to be resting against the old rose brick of the crinkle-crankle wall now gilded by the afternoon sun to deep umber. She was frowing and peering right - the direction from which a London-leaving car might reasonably be expected to arrive. But the Citroën CV, PRESS disc on its windscreen, approached from the left and was through the open gates and half way up the drive before she noticed.
Semaphoring wildly, Heather started to run. Fast and graceless, flip-flops alternately slapping against the soles of her feet and the gravel, she cursed her misdirected attention.
The car was already parked and two people had got out. If they rang the bell ... One of them was standing in the porch, the other, fingers steepled against the light, was peering through a closed window. Calling on Artemis the swift-footed for assistance, Heather panted and lumbered on.
The female half of the duo watched this approach, lips compressed for it was an amusing sight. Mistakenly encouraged into lime green (Ken said it matched her eyes), Heather had piled up her hair to emphasise her neck, and she’d gilded her eyelids and brows to emphasise the hierophantic nature of her calling. She wore a nuclear receptor and the pyramid bounced on her vast bosom as she ran.
‘Terry ... hey ...’ The girl was wearing a mini-skirted denim suit, cream tights and spiky high-heeled shoes. She carried a black patent-leather bag almost as big as a brief case. ‘Get a load of this.’
‘Blimey,’ said Terry. (Short-sleeved check shirt, jeans and trainers.) ‘Weight-watchers’ disaster of the year.’ The Pentax flew into his hands and clicked as Heather crossed her hands back and forth over her head. They stood together, waiting.
‘Hi. You, Mrs Beavers?’ She stepped out, tipping forwards slightly on the towering heels. ‘Heather?’
Heather nodded, leaning on the porch frame, cheeks like sweating beetroots, hair collapsing. Terry took a couple more pictures. One of these, very cruelly angled indeed, made her look like a washed-up dugong.
He said, ‘Lovely bash, darlin. Yours is it?’ and went off without waiting for a reply, walking backwards, click clicking all the time.
‘I’m Ave Rokeby.’
She had a really nice voice, decided Heather. Soft and kind and interested. A little humorous. Not at all like that common aggressive photographer. She was holding out her hand. That wasn’t so nice. Long bony fingers with crimson nails like birds’ claws. Quite witchy in fact. About to shake it, Heather realised she was clutching a Walkers ‘Salt and Vinegar’ bag picked up from the pavement. They laughed as she transferred it to the other hand.