Death in Disguise (5 page)

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 Elizabethan 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.

If only she had been able to learn the sex of the person the Master was addressing. She would then simply have confided in someone of the opposite gender.

She jumped to her feet almost growling with crossness, for May could not bear to think there was something wrong that couldn't be fixed. She started to pace up and down, calling silently but with great force on Kwan-Yin, the pale peach lady master, under whose guidance and sublime patronage she had been placed during a charming ceremony involving a basket of fruit, some folds of clean white linen and an extremely substantial cheque. But although from then on Kwan-Yin had never stinted when it came to giving advice and firing off mother-of-pearl rays to refresh and comfort, today she remained absolutely unforthcoming.

Arno was hoeing the broad beans and struggling with his koan. It was a very difficult koan, having been set originally by the Zen master Bac An. ‘What is the sound,' the great sage had inquired, ‘of one hand clapping?'

Step by rational-thinking step would, Arno knew, avail him naught. Illumination according to the
Teach Yourself Satori
shelves of the library (Theo/Psych/Myth: Oriental Sub-Section 4:17), though sudden and blinding, would be vouchsafed only after months—perhaps years—of gruelling meditation and reflection. And that wasn't the half of it. The disciple must closely attend to every moment of every day, living always with full awareness and one hundred per cent physical, mental and spiritual involvement in any undertaking no matter how humble. Arno had many little ploys to trick him back into the present when attention strayed which it did all the time. Now he pinched his arm to banish daydreaming and concentrated once more on the weeds. He grasped the handle, wholly experiencing the satiny warm wood, stared intently at the rusty blade and scrutinised the minute white flowers of the chickweed. Even the dark-tipped stamens were assiduously noted.

Arno did all this with no feelings of pleasure. Descartes' notion of man as master and proprietor of nature struck no answering chord in his breast. He did not enjoy or understand the garden at all. It seemed to plot ensnarement, being full of grasping brambles and secret squishy places cunningly concealed beneath firm-looking grass. It was full of insects too: leather-jackets and chafer grubs; pea thrips and eelworm. All strongly motivated and growing fat on Arno's vegetables which, truth to tell, were not much cop to start with. Having no idea of soil husbandry he planted carrots in clay, beans in soggy ground and potatoes over and over in the same plot.

He was aware of course that such agricultural ignorance could be remedied and had at one point bought a book for the purpose. It was very thick and crammed with black and white drawings, many of them illustrating to perfection Arno's scabbed, forked and furry emblements. Boredom smothered his mind the moment he first glanced upon the closely packed hectoring paragraphs and the volume quickly got lost behind balls of twine and old seed packets at the back of the potting shed.

Naturally he had remonstrated when given the position of gardener, assuring the nominations committee that he had no talent at all in such a direction. But that, it was patiently explained, was the whole reason behind the allocation. His own wishes must not be secondary, not even last, but of no account whatsoever. No pandering to the ego (that slavering, ravenous beast). No picking and choosing. To grow in grace was to shrink in self-interest and there were no short cuts. Arno sighed and winkled out a bit more groundsel.

But then all irritation vanished for, humming across the lawns and pond and the rhododendron walk, came a mellifluent flow of sound. Arno put aside his hoe so as to give the music played by the darling of his heart his full and rapt attention. One of Arno's deepest fears was that if by some miracle his ego, constantly starved of accedence to its desires, withered away entirely, his love for May would disappear as well—taking with it all cause for future joy.

It had been borne upon him gradually that he would never speak of his magnificent obsession. This wasn't always the case. When he had first arrived, not having grasped the full splendour of May's bountiful personality and remarkable musical gifts, and possessed by a wistful lust for attention, he had presumed to press his artless suit. This had consisted of a series of overtures so quiet, subtle and introspective that no one noticed them, least of all May. And this despite her penchant for divination.

But realising quite quickly that his ambition had wildly overleapt itself and that his beloved was one of those extraordinary beings put upon this earth not for the comfort of one solitary soul but of all mankind, Arno withdrew to settle, almost content, for a lifetime of devoted service.

He had so nearly missed knowing her at all having arrived at the Golden Windhorse by a very chancey and roundabout route. He was quite alone in the world, his mother with whom he had lived since his father ran away thirty years before, having recently died. The protracted and undeservedly cruel manner of her death, for she was the gentlest soul alive, had left him bitter, lonely and in despair. After the funeral he had shut himself away in the little terraced house in Eltham like a wounded animal. He practised only the minimum grooming and feeding necessary to stay alive and look reasonably presentable when going out for food. Apart from shop assistants he saw no one for weeks at a time for he had given up his job at the Water Board Authority to nurse his mother in the last stages of her illness.

Most days he would lie curled up in bed, a ball of dark steely pain, his cheeks slobbered with tears. Salt water ran into his ears, his nose clogged and his throat was sore. His mother's friends, and she'd had many, would tap on the window and occasionally, meeting him abroad, ask him around for meals. Sometimes he found little cardboard boxes containing tins of soup and instant whip on his doorstep. Weeks went by when he hardly got up. The blinds were permanently drawn and day ran into night ran into day with merely a rim of brightness round the window frame to indicate which was which. Once he had found himself frying bacon at what he thought was breakfast time only to discover it was three in the morning.

Then, one afternoon, he started to read again. He had made some coffee but instead of slumping back on to the bed as usual to drink it, he had sat up at the kitchen table, opened some Bourbon biscuits from one of the gift boxes and picked up
Little Dorrit
. He and his mother had both loved the Victorian novelists although she had preferred Trollope.

Later that day, having finished shopping he'd called in at the second-hand bookshop and spent some time browsing in the philosophical section. He supposed now, looking back, that he had been hoping to obtain some insight into the reason for his mother's prolonged agony. He didn't of course. He took half a dozen volumes home but they were either so abstruse he could not make head nor tail of them or so glib and silly that they would have made him laugh had he been capable.

Shortly after this he attended several spiritual meetings where although his mother did not ‘come through,' he had obtained a degree of comfort, paradoxically by observing the suffering of others. Several people present had lost young children and the sight of their anguish and the small toys they sometimes brought along to encourage the shades of their dear infants to draw nigh helped Arno put his own bereavement in perspective. His mother had, after all, been nearly eighty and by her own admission tired of life.

And so, gradually, the sharper edge of Arno's misery was transformed into a dull bearable ache. But his loneliness remained, unassuaged by the shallow day-to-day exchanges that were his lot. He yearned timidly for a wider, more intimate acquaintance whilst being unsure quite how to bring this state of affairs about. His only hobby was reading so he could hardly follow the ubiquitous advice to join a club whose members shared his interests. Even so he felt the vague cautious friendliness he was starting to feel vis-à-vis the wider world should be encouraged, so he signed up for a Literary Appreciation course at the nearest technical college.

But then, walking home from the enrolment evening, he had called into Nutty Notions for some honey and seen a card on the noticeboard advertising a psychic weekend ‘Hearing From Your Loved One'. Whether it was the nursery comfort of the words ‘loved one' or simply the idea of a weekend away from the cheerless shell that his home had now become, Arno decided to go. It was rather expensive (he noted from the travel agent's window that he could have had a week in Spain for the same amount), but he felt it might well be worth it for the chance of getting to know new people.

As things turned out the ‘high-grade channeller' (a Hopi Indian) promised on the card came down with a low-grade bout of flu but ‘Man—the Cosmic Onion!' proved a not uninteresting alternative theme to occupy the serious inquirer's mind.

The opening address was given by Ian Craigie, Founder Emeritus of the community. Arno was impressed and mildly entertained at the idea of himself as multi-layered with the ‘god self' at the very heart of things. He enjoyed the company of the other guests and was intrigued by the variety of remedial courses: Colour Therapy, Harmonic Tuning, Tear Up Your Negative Script, The Care and Cleansing of Your Astral Body. An initial consultation was included in the cost of the weekend and he had almost decided on a harmonic tune when the door of what he now knew to be the Solar opened and, with a thrilling rustle of iridescent taffeta, Miss May Cuttle swept in.