Muttering and talking to himself, the old, massive, motley-haired man shuffled through the darkening levels of the castle, wrapped in his furs and hopes and fears.
Quiss's solution to the problem, his answer to the riddle "What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?" was, "The immovable object loses; force always wins!"
(The red crow, sitting on the balustrade of the balcony, had cackled with laughter. Ajayi had sighed.)
The attendant came back after a few minutes, its little red boots ruffling the hem of its robe. "Much as I dislike being the bearer of bad news..." it began.
PART THREE
AMWELL STREET
A succession of heavy trucks rumbled down Amwell Street as Graham turned onto it from Rosebery Avenue; they were big grey lorries, stone or chippings carriers with great corrugated sides and a plume of dust trailing after them in the near-still air. Graham was heading slightly uphill now, and slowed his pace accordingly. He listened to the traffic, felt the warm air slip by, moved his portfolio from one hand to the other, and thought of her.
He hadn't been able to see Slater for two days after the party, and that time had passed in a daze for him. On the Monday, though, Slater had been in the small steamy cafe and sandwich bar on Red Lion Street which he usually spent most of his term days in, and Graham had supplied him with cups of tea and expensive rounds of smoked salmon on granary bread while Slater slowly, teasingly, told him about Sara.
Yes, they had been neighbours in Shrewsbury, but of course they had only seen each other during the school holidays, and of course they hadn't made friends over some grotty little terrace-house garden fence; he'd first noticed her from the tree house in his parents" garden while she was learning to ride her new pony in her parents" ten acres of mature woodland and well-kept pasture.
"A tree house?" Graham teased back. "Wasn't that a bit butch?" Slater replied tartly: "I was being Jane, sweetie, not Tarzan."
Sara's best years. Slater continued, had been just after leaving school. She had been a scamp in those days, he said, sighing with exaggerated wistfulness. She drank Guinness, smoked Gauloises and would eat anything as long as it was loaded with garlic. Odour-free she wasn't. She carried a large handbag whenever she went out. It contained potatoes to stuff up the exhaust pipes of expensive cars, and a very large sharp knife for tearing holes in the hoods of convertibles. If it could be arranged, she threw up into the cars through the holes so created.
She got drunk a lot and once did a strip on top of the piano in a local pub. (Graham asked Sara about this, on one of their canal walks. She smiled, looked down at her feet as she walked, finally admitted, a little ashamedly, that it was all true; "I was wild," she agreed in her slow, low voice, nodding. Graham felt a sort of ache then, as he had when Slater first told him; he wanted to have known her then, to have been a part of her life during that time. He was jealous, he realised, of time itself.)
She was three years older than Slater; twenty-three now. She had been married for the last two years, to a man who really was a sewage plant manager (Slater was quite hurt that Graham thought he'd invented this detail for the sake of a joke). She had married against the wishes of her parents; they hadn't talked since the marriage. She didn't get on well with them anyway; probably she married as much to get at them as anything else. It was a pity, because her parents weren't bad sorts; like his own, they just believed everything they read in the Daily Telegraph.
Sara had only one real skill, or talent. Not having done very well at school (not even allowed to sit the Oxbridge exams), she had nevertheless been diligent about her piano lessons, and was in fact quite good on the instrument. The horrible hubby had not encouraged this, however, and indeed had sold her piano one weekend when she was away staying with friends. That hadn't been The Last Straw; far from it. Selling the piano was only a few months into the marriage. She ought to have got out then, but she, the stubborn one, persisted.
Hubby wasn't happy when no kiddies appeared; blamed her. Sara had tried to be the good wife but failed; the other wifies she was supposed to socialise with to further hubby's career were dreadful, brainless bores. Social ostracism followed outbursts of silliness, hubby drank a lot, didn't hit her often but did bad-mouth her excessively, and took up fishing; went away for weekends with male friends she'd never heard of. Claimed to be tackling rivers but kept bringing home filleted sea fish on the Sunday night, and was always suspiciously careful to empty his pockets when he gave her his clothes to wash. She began to Suspect.
She had her own weekends, here in London, staying with Veronica, whose flat she was now looking after while its owner worked a year's exchange course at UCLA. On one of those weekends she had met Stock, a photographer who did a lot of, work for one of the newspaper colour supplements, though always under assumed names, for tax purposes. Slater had seen him on his BMW bike, or just getting off it. Never seen him without his crash helmet on; could be an albino or a Rastafarian for all he knew. Looked a bit like Darth Vader without the cloak. Jealous, moody type, apparently; married too but separated. No idea why he appealed to the lovely Sara.
Anyway, he thought they would be drifting apart a bit now, perversely but predictably because they were seeing more of each other, not just weekends; Stock stayed the night at the horrible little place in Islington quite often, but Slater thought Sara might be getting bored with the black-leather macho man.
The thing round her neck? Scar tissue all right; a birthmark she'd had removed in early teens in case it turned malignant. Yes, he found it perversely beautiful-too. "La Cicatrice" had been his pet name for her.
Finally Slater divulged the flat's telephone number, and Graham noted the seven numbers down carefully, double-checking them and ignoring Slater's snide remarks about quirky Sara with her terrible taste in men, and the unfaithful, untrustworthy nature of women in general. He'd offered to swap stories about what had happened once they had each paired off at the party, but Graham wasn't going to tell, and told Slater so as he carefully wrote her name by the side of the numbers: Sarah Fitch. Slater laughed, pointing and guffawing at what Graham had written. "Not one big "f; two little ones. Like British industry, our Sara's undercapitalised. And no "h" on the end of Sara," he said.
Graham called her from the School that day, found her in. She said she was delighted to hear from him; he thrilled at the sound of her voice. She was free the following Thursday evening. She'd meet him in a pub called the Camden Head, at nine. Looking forward to it.
He whooped for joy as he left the phone cubicle.
She was late, as she always was, and they only had about an hour and a half to talk before she had to go, and he was nervous and she looked tired though still beautiful in bright red cords, Arran jumper and tattily magnificent fur coat. "I think I might be falling for you, you know," he said as they were drinking up at eleven.
She smiled at him, shook her head, changed the subject, seemed distracted, looking about as though for somebody she expected to see. He wished he'd kept quiet.
She walked with him to the bus-stop, would not let him walk her back to the flat, said not to follow her; she'd watch, be angry. She kissed him again, quickly, daintily. "Sorry I haven't been great company. Call me soon; I'll be on time next time."