Death in Disguise Page 3

  But he never stopped being frightened. And now, when a door on the landing opened. even though it was only Trixie going to the bathroom, Tim ran like the wind to the nearest foxhole and once more hid himself away.

  In the Solar the Master sat, a tisane of fresh mint-and-lemon balm in his hand. Suhami, who had asked to see him urgently, seemed in no hurry to speak now that she was here. Being in the Master’s presence frequently affected people so. Whatever disturbance of mind or body drove them to seek his counsel, they would find hardly had they come before him than the matter did not seem so urgent after all.

  And in any case thought Suhami as she rested upon her cushion, spine supple and elegantly straight, it was now too late for words. The damage had been done. She looked at her teacher. At his delicate hands, enrapt features and thin shoulders. It was impossible to be angry with him; foolish to expect him to understand. He was so guileless, his concerns purely of a spiritual nature. He was in love (Janet had once said) with the ideal of purity and so saw goodness everywhere. Suhami pictured her father, soon to be on his dreadful juggernauting way, and her distress returned, keen as before.

  Guy Gamelin was about as spiritual as a charging rhino and had been known to leave an equivalent amount of chaos in his wake. The Master could not possibly imagine a person so volatile; so alarming when thwarted; so consumed by massive gobbling greed. For he thought there was that of God in everyone and all you had to do to reach it was to be patient and love them.

  ‘I would not have suggested this visit’ (she was quite used to the Master reading her mind) ‘if I didn’t think the time was right.’ When Suhami remained silent, he continued: ‘It is time to heal, child. Let all this bitterness go. It will only do you harm.’

  ‘I do try.’ She said, as she had a dozen times over the past week, ‘I just don’t see why he has to come here. I shan’t change my mind about the money if that’s what’s behind it.’

  ‘Oh, let’s not start on that again.’ He smiled. ‘I know an impasse when I see one.’

  ‘If you won’t take it, it will go to charity.’ She added quickly, ‘You don’t know what it does to people, Master. They look at you, think of you differently. Already—’ Her face changed, becoming apprehensive. Soft and blurred. Her mouth trembled.

  ‘Already?’

  ‘You…haven’t told anyone? About the trust fund?’

  ‘Of course not, since that was your wish. But don’t you think your parents—’

  ‘My mother isn’t coming. He wrote saying she was ill.’

  ‘That may well be true.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head savagely. ‘She didn’t want to come. She wouldn’t even pretend.’

  ‘A visit on that basis would be worthless. Be brave Suhami—don’t seek false satisfactions. Or demand that others comfort and sustain you. That’s neither fair on you or them. You have everything you need right here…’ And he laid his fingers to his heart. ‘How many times do I have to say this?’

  ‘It’s easy for you.’

  ‘It is never easy.’

  He was right about that. Only once at meditation had she come anywhere near understanding what ‘everything you need’ really meant. She had been sitting for just over an hour and had experienced first a deep intensification of the silence then an extraordinary gathering of attention which she felt as a strong energetic pulse. Then there was a moment of luminous stillness so sublime that it seemed all her humanness, all the mess and pain and hope and loss that made up Suhami, vanished—subsumed into some inner core of certain light. A blink of an eye and it was gone. She had mentioned it to no one but the Master who had simply warned her against any zealous seeking of further such experiences. Naturally she had been unable to resist such attempts but it had never happened again.

  A year ago she had not even known he was alive and still occasionally experienced deep tremors of alarm when recalling the haphazard manner of their meeting. If a left turn had been taken instead of a right…

  She had been with half a dozen acquaintances in a wine bar off Red Lion Square. It was during the Happy Hour—that early-evening hiatus when the lonely, disaffected and dispossessed can swill themselves into oblivion for half the going rate. They were all smashed, flicking aubergine dip around with bread sticks. Asked to leave, refusing, being threatened with the police was nothing new. They racketed off, arms linked, shouting, forcing people off the pavement in Theobald Road.

  It was Perry who’d seen the poster attached to a board by a shabby doorway. The words ‘LOVE, LIGHT & PEACE’ were prominent as was a large photograph of a middle-aged man with long white hair. For no reason this struck them as hysterically funny. Jeering and snorting with contemptuous laughter, they charged up the worn, mica-freckled steps and through some swing doors.

  They found themselves in a small room, sparsely occupied, with a platform at one end. The audience was mostly women, mostly elderly. A few earnest-looking men with rucksacks or carrier bags. One wore a cap with a transparent plastic cover. He kept pursing his lips judiciously and shaking his head, making it plain he was not to be easily impressed. Everyone turned at the disruption and several people ‘tutted’ and sucked their teeth.

  The newcomers clattered along the row of tip-back seats and sat hoisting their feet up. They were reasonably quiet for about five minutes then Perry crossed his eyes in warning preparation and let out a long succulent raspberry. The others shrieked and giggled, stuffing fists into their mouths like naughty children. They put on po faces as people stared and Perry shouted: ‘It was him with his hat in a bag.’

  Ten minutes later, bored with the game, they got up and left, mocking the man on the platform, kicking the seats on their way out. Reaching the swing doors, one of them—Sylvie—turned and looked back. Half a step away from chaos (as she was later to recognise), something had compelled this movement. She returned to sit quietly on the wooden seat, heedless of raucous beckoning shouts from the stairwell.

  The address had soaked into her, warm and soothing as honey balm. Afterwards she had been amazed that an evening which had so utterly transformed her life was so hard to recall in detail. The only complete sentence she remembered was: ‘We are all standing in our own light.’ Although she’d had no perception as to what the words actually meant they’d struck her then (and did still) as immeasurably profound and consoling. Even in those first moments she had been aware of a longing to take that sideways step away from her old tawdry self. To crack open and shed the carapace of a loveless and ugly past. Those hate-filled drunken days and love-starved nights.

  When the talk was over the speaker put on a coat over his long blue robe. In this he was assisted by a small bearded man. Then he drank a little water and stood, looking over the rows of empty seats to where the girl sat. He smiled and she got up and moved towards him, feeling (although she could not then have described it so) the pull of sheer disinterested goodness. She seemed to sense in the slight figure an overwhelming concern for her wellbeing. The sheer novelty of such a situation struck her as unbearably poignant and she began to weep.

  The Master watched her approach. He saw a thin tall girl in a lewd outfit. A gleaming silver cake-frill of a skirt and halter top no wider than two ribbons. She had a wild fuzz of pale hair, eyes smearily ringed with kohl and a scarlet jammy mouth. She smelt of gin and strong perfume and sour embittered dreams. As she lurched closer her sobs became more raucous and by the time she reached the dais she was shouting; terrible wails of grief and woe. ‘Ahhh…ahhhh.’ Rocking on high sparkly heels, arms folded tight across her barely covered breasts, she stood and howled.

  So long ago now it was hard for her to recall the intensity of that despair. She reached out and took her companion’s glass.

  ‘Do you want some more tea, Master?’

  ‘No. Thank you.’

  There was a deep crevice between his brows. He looked tired. Worse—Suhami noticed the drooping skin beneath his eye—he looked old. She could not bear the thought that he was vulne
rable to the passing of time. For was he not the fount of all wisdom, the never-ending source of blessings? He was there to love and protect them all. If anything happened to him…

  As she moved towards the door, Suhami realised that knowing someone was mortal and truly comprehending it were two different things. She had convinced herself he would be there for them for ever. She thought of Tim. What would he do without his beloved protector and companion? What would any of them do? A spasm of fear seized her and she ran back and pressed his hand to her cheek.

  ‘What on earth is it?’

  ‘I don’t want you to die.’

  She thought he would smile and tease her out of her distress but he simply said: ‘But we must. All of us.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid?’

  ‘No. Not now.’ And he withdrew his hand. ‘I would have been…before. But not now.’

  I am afraid, thought Suhami. And her face was deeply troubled as she left him.

  Flowing from an open casement on the ground floor of the house came a torrent of glorious sound. May seated at her cello, legs sturdily apart, size eights planted firmly on sea-grass matting, was playing the Boccherini Sonata. The bow swept back and forth with fierce élan. Two deep furrows tugged at her thick brows and her eyes were tightly closed. She tossed her head in such an excess of passionate dedication that transparent pearls of sweat flew sparkling through the warm air and one of her plaits, coiled like an auburn saucer over her ear, became loose, swinging vigorously back and forth in three-four time.

  She was wearing a loose gown, tie-dyed gamboge and maroon showing the pyramids and a burial cortege sideways on. Not one of the print room’s more successful efforts. A mistake had been made with the blocks so that at one point the funeral party—corpse, camels, mourners et al—had done a volte-face, colliding with the forward-looking lot head-on.

  Above the bateau neckline of this voluminous shift rose May’s splendid profile. Cleanly etched, serene, noble, unambiguous in its dedication to the spreading of happiness and health, it was also most attention-catching for May adorned her face as she did her room, her person and every single artefact she owned, which is to say prodigiously. And her palette was as comprehensive as her brush was generous. Cheeks bloomed wanton coral, full lips shiny pomegranate red. Eyelids bright green shading into a blend of sky blue and plum, occasionally patterned with silver dust. Her tea-rose complexion sometimes had quite a solid bloom for, occasionally distracted by other-worldly musings, she would forget she had already put on her foundation and would impasto on a further layer before finishing off with a generous dusting of Coty American Tan.

  Now, after a final buoyant flourish of the bow, she laid her hand upon the strings to still their vibration. Was there any other instrument, she wondered, any other creature that could grunt with elegance? She rested her cheek briefly against the glowing wood, leaving a dusty peach-brown imprint, then leaned the cello against her chair and in all her calicoed splendour billowed across to the window.

  She stood gazing out at the cedar tree, struggling to maintain the sensation of joyful calm that had possessed her whilst playing. But she had no sooner noted such feelings than joy became mere happiness, and pleasure transmuted quickly into a dullish lack of ease. May sighed and, for comfort, wrenched her thoughts to her recent colour workshop ‘There’s A Rainbow Round Your Shoulder’, which had been oversubscribed and very well received. But even this stratagem was only partially successful. Visions of uplifted participants all thinking aquamarine faded despite all her best efforts to the contrary, and the shadow of anxiety returned. She realised she was not even looking forward to her coming regression and these were often most exciting occasions.

  May was extremely cross that this should be so. She didn’t have a lot of patience with folk who ‘mooned about’ as she put it. Fretting over this and that, refusing to get to grips with the problem, never mind putting it right. Rather self-indulgent she thought that sort of thing. Now she was doing it herself. And really without excuse, for there was certainly no shortage of people to go and talk to. Unfortunately one of them (she didn’t know which) was the cause of her concern. She would have liked to turn to the Master even though it was not usual to bother him with temporal matters. The fact that in this instance she could not caused her genuine distress. It was as if a constantly reliable source of warmth and light had been unkindly doused. She felt not only bereft but also rejected—which she knew to be unreasonable. The difficulty was that her beloved guru—innocently and unwittingly she was sure—was partially to blame for this sense of unease.

  It had happened like this. Two days after Jim died May had been passing the Master’s chamber on her way to the laundry room. Although the door was ajar his beautiful passe-partout zodiac screen was positioned in such a way as to conceal any occupants. Low voices were chuntering on, stopping, starting again and May assumed a spiritual-growth stroke chakra-cleansing session was in progress. Then, suddenly a voice cried out: ‘Oh God—why couldn’t you have left well alone! If they do a postmor—’ A vigorous shushing cut this short.

  The resulting silence seemed to May, standing as if bolted to the floor, quite stifling. Of a smothered, tightly wrapped quality. Then she understood from the rustle of a robe, rather than any footfall, that someone was coming around the screen. She jumped aside just in time, flattening herself against the corridor wall, and the door was firmly closed.

  Trembling with surprised distress, May continued to stand there. She had hardly recognised the Master’s voice, so choked had it been with emotion. Whether anger or fear it was hard to say. Could have been either. Or both. She struggled to persuade herself that she had misunderstood or that the words, taken out of context (and she had heard none of the context), could have quite a different meaning from the one apparent. But to what could the words ‘post mortem’ apply except Jim’s death? The inference was surely inescapable.

  In the laundry room, pouring ecologically sound enzyme-free pale green washing granules, May silently railed against the malevolent sprite who had directed her steps that morning. For, like the majority of the community, she firmly believed that the shape and disposition of her day was ordered not by herself but by her stars and she couldn’t say she’d not been warned. Zurba, moon of Mars, had been skidding about from here to breakfast all week.

  When the time came to take out the dripping piles of brilliantly coloured washing, May couldn’t help reflecting on the contrast between their freshly rinsed unstained perfection and her own darkly blemished thoughts.

  And then, about a month after this, another almost equally disturbing thing occurred. She had been awoken in the middle of the night by a soft bump in Jim’s room, which was next to her own. This was quickly followed by two more as if a chest of drawers was gently being opened and closed. May had heard someone moving around there on a couple of occasions during the day but had thought nothing of it, assuming that whoever it was would be about the sad task of sorting out Jim’s things preparatory to their disposal. But this nocturnal prowling was something else. Guessing at burglars, she had bravely taken up her heaviest tome (New Maps of Atlantis and Her Intergalactic Logoi), crept along the corridor and, holding her breath, with fingers pinched tight around the handle, gently tried Jim’s door. It was locked.

  Silent though her pressure had been, May heard a sudden flurry of movement. Although alarmed she stood firm, holding New Maps high above her head. But the door remained closed. Uncertain what to do next, still listening, she heard a metallic grating sound and realised it was the window latch. She rushed back to her room but by the time she had put down the book and reached her own window it was too late. Next door’s casement gaped wide and she was convinced she saw a shadow, a dark disturbance, at the end of the terrace.

  This made her rethink her assumption that the next step would be to raise the alarm. For whoever it was had not made for the street and the outside world. It would have been easy enough for them to do so for, like many other large Elizabet
han houses, the Manor was only a modest distance from the main village street. There had been a bit of halfhearted vandalism a few months before (some bulbs uprooted, rubbish thrown in the pond), and the Lodge had purchased a halogen lamp which switched itself on after dusk if a person or vehicle appeared on or near the drive. It was not on now.

  Doubly disturbed, May rested on her window seat and gazed out into the perfumed night uncomforted by the rich complexity of garden scents or shining perfection of low hanging stars. It was a moment of extreme isolation for her. Not the bleak, four-in-the-morning intensification of solitude when the possible time and manner of one’s death presses like a blindfold on the mind. Hers was a humbler but no less terrible sensation. She had discovered that in her Eden—for so happy was she at the Golden Windhorse no other name would do—was a serpent. Double-faced and -hearted, double-tongued.

  Who it was she as yet had no idea, but she believed—no, she knew—that the person fleeing from Jim’s room had re-entered the house. Her mind backtracked to that earlier disturbing snatch of conversation. She was convinced, even whilst chiding herself for such dramatic silliness, that the two incidents were connected. The temptation was to put them both aside. Carry on as usual in the hope that nothing else peculiar would happen, then in time the whole thing must surely fade from mind. The phrase ‘mind your own business’ was perhaps not entirely inappropriate here. But that sort of attitude was completely against the ethos of the community. The whole point of living in such a way was that everyone constantly minded everyone else’s business. That’s what caring was all about.

  And so May’s thoughts treadmilled back to the well-worn theme of the mystery prowler and the mystery voice. Fretful and distracted, she had been tightly pleating her skirt. Now, released, the camels sprang forth giving a more than fair impression of a living caravan.