The taste in his mouth, that familiar distinctive, not unpleasant, intensifying taste, not cinnamon, not other spices, not anything known to the culinary repertoire, suddenly drove him to his desk. A sensation just as familiar was creeping into his head, subtly colouring the walls, distorting the straight lines of the furniture and making the room seem to curl and sway. Frantically he pulled at the drawer of the desk. Its contents spewed onto the floor. The whisky bottle rolled away with a clatter that resembled cackling laughter. He scrabbled about amongst the papers, throwing them into the air in desperation. But of the dozens of little polythene envelopes he expected to find, there were just two, as if they had been left deliberately to say that it had all been planned. A kind of ‘thank you.’
Staggering now – because he was losing control of his muscles and it was becoming difficult to keep his balance – he clutched the stair rail and somehow reached the floor below. The door, previously so resolutely locked, now stood wide open. He entered cautiously, almost creeping, looking around fearfully, down at the bare floor, then up at the lights that illuminated it. He saw the cages that lined the walls, with their demented occupants. Then he saw the cameras that, from their flickering red lights, he knew were activated, and heard the catch of the door click shut.
THE TUNNEL
The taxi bearing Thomas from the bus station swept up the drive and stopped in front of Laurel House. While the driver unloaded his case, Thomas waited patiently for someone to appear, but no-one did. He stepped back on the gravel and looked up at the creeper covered walls and white lattice windows, awed by a manifestation of wealth that set to shame his parents’ terrace house in Putney. A slight movement at one of the upper windows caught his eye, but he gave no further thought to the pale face of a woman he did not recognise watching him through the gap in the curtains.
As it had been throughout his journey, his mind was occupied by the prospect of greeting his Aunt Harriet, whose dark image had lingered in his memory since his last visit five years earlier, when he was just nine. That was before his mother and her sister stopped speaking to one another, a situation that had continued unresolved until his mother’s recent traffic accident and hospitalization. It was only through a perceived duty on the part of his aunt that he was here at all. But while he expected problems with Aunt Harriet, there was no way he could have foreseen that the bane of his stay would be his cousin Mirabelle.
Unable to find the banknote his father had given him, and thus placate the taxi driver, Thomas opened the door and ventured inside.
He found them in the drawing room. Mirabelle was seated in front of an easel, twirling a paint brush in an attitude of deep reflection. Aunt Harriet was standing behind with a hand on her daughter’s shoulder.
‘Thomas, did you remember to tip the driver?’ His aunt’s first words as were hardly welcoming.
‘Well, I only had…’ Thomas stuttered.
‘Then I suppose I’d better. While I’m busy with that Mirabelle can show you to your room.’
‘He’ll have to wait until I’ve finished.’ Mirabelle said, slowly unscrewing a new tube of vermillion and squeezing a long worm of paint onto her palette. ‘Then I’ll see.’
Despite his embarrassment, Thomas’ powers of observation had not diminished. Brightly coloured and incomprehensible paintings – presumably Mirabelle’s – had displaced the original family portraits. The old upright piano had been upstaged by a baby grand that now basked in the light of French windows opening onto the lawn. Thomas only later realised that this extravagance, so clearly aimed at nurturing the gifts of a prodigal daughter, was quite misplaced. From that moment, and until it was unexpectedly ripped asunder two days later, a fine veil of unreason had fallen in front of all he beheld. Now he could only contemplate Mirabelle’s fair face, trying hopelessly to reconcile it with that of the tomboy he had once fought – and succumbed to through lack of interest – on his last visit. For the moment Mirabelle and all her doings were wonderful.
‘Bloody man’s a crook,’ Aunt Harriet said, returning to the angry scrunch of tyres on the gravel outside. ‘How can a fishing rod possibly be a second piece of luggage?’
‘I think fishing’s cruel,’ Mirabelle said, idly toying with her brush.
‘Yes, I quite agree. A stupid thing to bring.’ To restore her equanimity Aunt Harriet stepped behind Mirabelle, bunching the girl’s raven hair in her hands and looking at the painting. ‘What heavenly camellias. Do you have such glorious things where you are in London, Thomas?’
‘Dad’s got some marigolds and Michaelmas daisies.’
‘Has he really? Poor Samantha. What a destiny.’ She turned to her daughter. ‘Would you wish to paint marigolds, Mirabelle?’
‘I would never paint marigolds, Mother. Aunt Esther told me only yesterday that people who grow marigolds also eat turnips – or look like them – I can’t remember which.’
‘Aunt Esther couldn’t possibly have said that, Mirabelle. That would be too much of a coincidence. You’re naughty to tease Thomas.’
‘Then it was something equally stupid,’ Mirabelle replied, feigning intense boredom while delivering a large blob of paint to the canvass.
As she was later to tell Thomas, Aunt Esther was listening intently to this exchange from behind the drawing room door. She was in an agony of indecision, uncertain whether to enter. The boy’s appearance from her window had rekindled thoughts that she had immediately dismissed as fanciful. Now, hearing his voice, they had returned with a force that set her heart pounding. Withdrawing her hand from the doorknob and grasping her stick she returned silently and thoughtfully to her attic room.
In her wardrobe mirror Aunt Esther contemplated a face that had managed to keep at bay a little of its seventy-five years span. She followed its lines with sensitive fingers, as if to brush them away, and parted the grey hairs at her forehead that seemed not so far removed, in this dim light, from their original gold. Not quite realising why, she crossed to the window to survey the landscape, letting her eyes dwell on the embankment at the boundary of the garden, where trains had once passed before Dr Beeching closed the line. Beyond that was the village of her childhood, its church now no more than a point of reference in the brown blotch of development around it. Then she did a curious thing. From the drawer of her dressing table beneath the window she withdrew a single penny piece and sat there, idly turning it over and over with her fingers until the daylight had quite gone. When Harriet knocked on her door she excused herself from dinner, claiming a headache. She needed that much time to think.
By the time he went to bed Thomas had begun to feel sorry for Aunt Esther. She was isolated in this household and in that respect at least it seemed he shared a kindred spirit. When she brought his breakfast in the morning and he saw her for the first time he knew he had found an ally.
But if an ally was needed, it was less for defence than to achieve a certain – though as yet indefinable – end; the same that had kept him turning, sleepless, in his bed until, with the dawn light, sheer exhaustion at last secured release.
‘They’ve had breakfast,’ Aunt Esther said from the door. ‘So I’ve brought you yours.’
‘They could have woken me,’ Thomas said, blinking angrily.
‘Mirabelle said she tried. She told me to tell you.’
Aunt Esther placed the tray with great care on his bedside table. Thomas thought that the decapitation of his egg was masterly.