Death in Disguise Read online

  ‘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.

  May was making inroads into a shallow tin dish, swooping and slicing with great panache. As she lifted the servings, long, pale yellow strings stretched back to base. She was talking as she served to the table at large.

  ‘…whole point about cataracts of course that the medical profession just will not see is that they are purely psychosomatic. The elderly cannot cope with modern life. Computers, street violence, large supermarkets, nuclear waste… They can’t bear to look at it. Ergo—the eye films over. I mean—it’s so simple. Guy?’

  ‘Thank you.’ His plate
arrived heaped with mysterious matter. A mosaic of red and brown and khaki, plus some black loops of rubbery-looking ribbon. Guy picked up his irons, noted a measure of surprise in the gathering and put them down again. Waiting for the others to be served, he began to sort people out.

  Gnomish man with bright red shovel-shaped beard; woman with coarse bushy hair and a morose expression. That poor fool of a boy who sat on the far side of Sylvie. Guy noticed with deep revulsion how gently she spoke to the wretched creature, once going as far as to lay her hand on his arm. People like that, flawed with disease, should be put away, not let loose to make their grotesque demands on the innocent and tender-hearted. Of his afternoon playmate there was no sign. Guy didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. Strangely, for him, a flicker of unease had appeared soon after Trixie’s departure. He still didn’t understand her problem: she’d made herself available, he’d taken up the offer and paid on the nail. And for all the wails of wounded pride, the fifty quid had disappeared when she did. No—Guy’s worry was that she might tell Sylvie and, in doing so, misrepresent the truth. Perhaps even make out she wasn’t willing. So he decided, when he saw the girl again, to go out of his way to be friendly. Maybe even go as far as to apologise, although for what he still had no idea.

  Once the serving was over a brief silence ensued during which everyone looked down at their plates. Guy looked down at his cow pats which looked faecetiously back. His neighbour sprang into speech. He had removed his smock and was now also sporting a T-shirt which instructed the reader: ‘Respect My Space’.

  ‘Hey…how about a getting-to-know-you people hunt? I’m Ken “Zadkiel” Beavers. And that’s my divine complement, Heather,’ said the grey-haired man. ‘Or Tethys, in astral terms.’

  ‘Guy Gamelin.’ They all shook hands, then Guy agitated his dinner somewhat with a fork. ‘What actually is all this?’

  ‘Well, that’s lasagne obviously. Goes without saying. This little heap is chick-pea purée and that,’ indicating the black coils, ‘is arame.’ Ken pronounced the word in a very odd way, raising his soft palate and honking like a goose. ‘Where would we all be without the ocean?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Arame’s a seaweed. From Japan.’ He pronounced ‘Harpahn’. ‘Eat enough—you’ll never have shingles again.’

  Guy, who had never had shingles in the first place, nodded vaguely and put down his fork. Beneath the hum of conversation he noticed music. Or rather a saccharine reconstruction of nature going about her business. Birds tweeting, trees whispering and a persistent ripple of water. Listening to it was like having your ears syringed.

  No doubt it was regarded as conducive to tranquillity. It seemed to work. The whole atmosphere was abnormally serene. All the voices were gentle. No one grabbed for what they wanted. Just gestured tenderly and murmured low. Guy wondered what they did with all their anger. Everyone had some after all. Part of the kit, along with liver and lights, teeth and nails. Did they meditate it away? Sublimate it under a blanket of kind deeds? Or—with a single babbling incantation—send it winging off for ever into the cosmos. What a load of jelly-bellied wimps. Huddling together, running away from the dark and from themselves. He became aware that he was scowling and, hurriedly adjusting his expression to one of polite interest, turned to his neighbour.

  ‘And what do you all do here at the Windhorse?’

  Heather gave her long hair an abandoned fling. ‘We laugh…we cry…’ She cupped her hands then opened them with a bestowing fling as if releasing a racing pigeon. ‘We live.’

  ‘Everyone does that.’

  ‘Not in the deepest chalice of their being.’ She passed a dish of green stuff. ‘Some carracol?’ Guy hesitated. ‘A fine mincing of comfrey, marjoram and just a little hempnettle.’

  Guy shook his head, concealing his disappointment well. ‘The one thing I’m not allowed. Hempnettle.’

  ‘Condensed sunshine,’ assured Ken, nodding at the fine mincing.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Impregnated with solar light.’ His crystal winked and twinkled, backing him up. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the five Platonic solids.’

  ‘Heard of them?’ said Guy. ‘I’m eating them.’ He smiled to show it was a joke then, sotto voce and with malice definitely aforethought, asked if there would be any meat.

  This led to a long lecture full of warm sentimental invective from Heather, concluding with the information that ‘at any given moment the colon of any given carnivore would have at least five pounds of animal protein fermenting in it.’

  ‘Five pounds.’

  ‘Minimum.’

  Guy whistled and Ken, perhaps to underline the sweet workability of his own gut reactions, let forth a whiffy crepitation. Guy wrinkled his nose. Heather changed the subject, offering Guy some more of the ersatz poteen that he had privately labelled ‘Château Scumbag’.

  Having failed to persuade him, she asked: ‘And what do you do all day?’

  ‘I’m a financier.’ As if you didn’t know.

  ‘Heav-e.-e.’

  ‘Not if you’ve got the balls,’ said Guy pleasantly. There was a sticky hiatus. ‘Oh dear—have I offended? I thought you were all terribly close to nature down here.’

  ‘Certainly we favour the visceral over the cerebral.’

  ‘The dark night of the intellect,’ interrupted Heather, ‘is drawing to a close.’

  It certainly seems to be in your case, thought Guy. ‘I enjoy a spot of cerebral cut-and-thrust myself,’ he said.

  ‘We are all millionaires of the spirit here,’ said Ken. ‘And think the rat race is for rats.’ This repartee was delivered through a mouthful of multi-coloured gubbins.

  ‘I’m surprised to hear myself referred to in such terms. Especially as a guest in your community.’ Ken turned scarlet. Guy was suddenly sick of them both. He leaned forward, contriving to speak with quiet confidentiality, secure in the knowledge that he couldn’t be overheard by the rest of the table.

  ‘Listen thunderbum, people do not abandon the rat race. It abandons them. The ones without fire in their bellies. And they crawl away leaving someone else to man the ship.’

  Ken smiled and reached out forgivingly. ‘It makes me sad to hear—’

  ‘It doesn’t make you sad to hear. It makes you bloody livid but you haven’t the courage to say so. And take your hand off my arm.’ The hand leapt away like a startled salmon.

  ‘Where would we be,’ Guy pushed his luck, ‘if everyone decided to slink off and contemplate their navels. No doctors—no nurses—no teachers…’

  ‘But that would never happen,’ protested Heather. ‘The number of people wishing to lead reclusive lives of a moral and philosophical nature—a spiritual elite if you will—must by the very nature of things be small. It is an intensely disciplined regime.’

  ‘I notice you take advantage of modern technology.’ No one, thought Guy, who had an arse like an elephant had any call to bandy the word ‘discipline’ about. He knew the time had come to shut up. ‘Has it never occurred to you that while you’re up there on your pillar of virtue, some poor sod’s on his knees down a mine so you’ll have coal to burn?’

  ‘But that’s his karma.’ Guy picked up a ripple of irritation. ‘He would be at a very low level of incarnation. Probably working his way up from a mole.’

  At the other end of the table people spoke amongst themselves. Janet wondered if she should go up yet again to see if Trixie could be persuaded to come out. May asked if anyone else thought the chick peas tasted rather odd, and Arno said on no account was she to have another morsel. Tim continued to eat globbily, stopping from time to time to stroke the amber sunflowers on Suhami’s birthday bag.

  Suhami herself ate little. She sat watching her father in a condition of growing unease. To someone who did not know him he was giving the impression of the perfect dinner guest. Nodding, talking, listening, smiling—although not eating much. Pretending? Of course. Brutal duplicity was his coinage. He played
his games with little else. And there was something now about his glance and the set of his head that she did not like. She felt a sudden rush of panic and wished that she could perform a violent exorcism and vanish him entirely. Heather was speaking. Suhami strained her ears.

  ‘…and we believe that the only true happiness is to be found in forgetting the self. So we try to lose our individuality in a concern for others. The sick or dispossessed…the poor…’

  ‘The poor…’ Guy’s voice exploded. Tormenting memories, long suppressed, struck fire. A young boy, kneeling before an electricity meter. Penknife jammed in the slot, unable to get knife or the money out and so feeling a length of chain across his shoulders. The same boy scavenging for fruit and vegetables from splintered boxes behind market stalls receiving great clouts around the head if he was spotted. A hollow belly occasionally crammed with cheap greasy piles of starch so that when the boy grew up he ate nothing that was not an invitation to a cardiac arrest. Richly sauced red meat, towers of chocolate and whipped cream. Lobster Thermidor.

  ‘…have to be strong…get out…get away…or you go under…’ Guy trembled and stared blindly around him, carried away by the intensity of his recall, hardly able to form his words. ‘…lice…the poor…they’re lice…’

  ‘No…you mustn’t say that.’ Arno leaned forward, pale but determined. ‘They are human beings and so to be valued. And helped, too, for they are powerless. Doesn’t it say in the Bible that the meek shall inherit the earth?’

  ‘They’ve done that all right.’ Guy gave vent to a goaded yelp. ‘There are mass graves everywhere full of them.’

  A stunned silence. Everyone looked at each other unable to believe that they had actually heard such a shockingly cruel remark.

  Guy sat motionless, his mouth still open, experiencing a thrill of horror. What had he done? How could he let himself be taunted into such intemperance by a couple of aging hippies when there was so much at stake? He lifted his head, cold and heavy as a stone, and stumbled once more into speech. ‘I’m sorry…forgive me.’ He got up. ‘Sylvie—I didn’t think…’