Death in Disguise (16 page)

When finally it was over he was exhausted. He looked across at Craigie who was looking down at his hands. Guy tried to read the other man's expression which struck him as one of concerned detachment, but this could surely not be the case. You could be one or the other but not both. And certainly not both at once. Guy sat for several moments more until the longing to evoke some sort of response became too much for him. He struggled to gather his wits then added a vindicative coda.

‘I gave her everything.'

Ian Craigie nodded sympathetically. ‘That's understandable. But of course it doesn't work.'

‘Can't buy love you mean? That's for sure. Otherwise there'd be no lonely millionaires.'

‘My point is that ultimately things cannot satisfy, Mr Gamelin. They have no life you see.'

‘Ah.' Guy did not see. Surely things, acquisitions to display and use, were what it was all about. How else did people know what sort of man you were? And surely on the most basic level one needed a house, food, warmth and clothing. He said as much.

‘Of course this is true. But there is a fourth great need which we ignore at our peril. And that's the need for intoxication.' He smiled, correctly interpreting Guy's translation of the word. ‘I refer to emotional and spiritual intoxication. We see it at the games sometimes. Hear it in music…'

‘I understand that.' Guy recalled the crowding glass canyons of the city. The dramatic rites of passage. Smoke-filled boardrooms; daggers noiselessly drawn. That was bloody intoxicating if you like. ‘But I don't see how, here…' He gave an all-inclusive wave.

‘Here we are in love with prayer. And the pursuit of goodness.'

A disturbing hint of irony. Guy disliked irony, seeing it as a weapon needed only by the smart-arsed weakling. ‘You sound as if you don't take it seriously.'

‘I take the quest very seriously. But people, no. At least only rarely.'

Guy felt suddenly cold as if a source of comfort had been capriciously withdrawn. Had the warmth, then, the understanding that he was pouring out his sorrow to an empathetic and receptive intelligence been no more than an illusion? Guy felt aggrieved. Cheated even. ‘The pursuit of goodness? I don't quite understand.'

‘No. Abstract nouns are always difficult. And dangerous. I suppose the plainest way to put it is that once the idea that such a thing truly exists…that it is perhaps available and we can experience it—once that idea has pricked you, it never afterwards leaves you quite alone.'

Guy thought of his all-consuming love and understood completely.

‘We spend most of our time here falling by the wayside of course, like everyone else.'

‘And is this…pursuit what Sylvie wants, do you think?'

‘She believes so at the moment. Her meditations have brought her a measure of content. But she is very young. We try on many masks throughout our lives. Eventually we find one that fits so well we never take it off.'

‘I've never worn a mask.'

‘You think not?' There was a rap on the door. He called out: ‘A few minutes May,' and turned back to Guy. ‘We haven't even touched on the problem of your daughter's inheritance, which was one of the principal reasons that I asked you down.'

‘The McFadden bequest? Not with you, Craigie.'

‘She wants to give it all to the community.'

Guy gave a strangled groan and the Master leaned forward anxiously. ‘Are you all right Mr Gamelin?'

Guy lifted his face. It was stamped with an expression of stupefied dismay. His jaws gaped. The Master surveyed this pitiable spectacle then smiled, but without parting his lips. These were firmly clamped together. After a few moments he spoke again.

‘Please don't distress yourself. The money will not be accepted. At least not at the moment. Your daughter is overly grateful for our affection, as children are who have not known love. Also the bequest reminds her of past unhappiness which is why she is determined to offload it, if not on us, elsewhere.' Guy became pale, even his port-wine nose blanched.

‘This vulnerability is what I hoped to talk about with you. I wondered if some procedure could not be opened whereby I can appear to accept it but actually make some arrangements for it to be securely held, perhaps for at least another year. She may of course still wish to dispose of it but my experience,' the irony was plainer now, ‘leads me to the belief that she will not.' 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 Dando. 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 rose-madder 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.