The Triple Goddess

by Ashly Graham

  The sheets, which were of coarse stiff linen, had been aired and smelled of lavender, and there was a soft woollen blanket, and two more folded on the foot of the bed. Peeking from under the pillow was a flannel nightshirt, in a pocket of which, when he took it out and unfolded it, he found tucked a red Phrygian-style nightcap.

  This he put on. After admiring the effect in the mirror, feeling a frisson of adventure he lit a small candle from the large one on the table and went into the bathroom. Another mirror, a round one for shaving, hung on the wall over the washstand, on which was set a new toothbrush in a mug, a tube of toothpaste, a bar of soap still in its wrapper, and a safety razor.

  With relief came exhaustion, and now that he was satisfied that he had seen all there was to see, and that nothing was lurking to surprise him, Dark returned to the main room. He closed the windows, removed his outer clothes, pulled on the nightshirt, blew out the candles, slipped between the sheets, pulled the nightcap over his ears, and straightway fell asleep.

  He was awoken at dawn by a noisy parliament of birds outside the window, and a lot of scratching under the eaves as they flew in and out about their business.

  Despite the earliness of the hour he had slept continuously and felt refreshed. Lying on his back with his arms folded behind his head and twiddling his toes, he watched with fascination the moted beams of early sunlight that refracted through the diamond-leaded glass of the window onto the ceiling and floor. It occurred to him how different he felt to the way he normally did first thing at the Annexe.

  Then he recalled his dream. He had been in the same room, but had contrived to crawl out of the window and clamber up a drainpipe onto a steep slate mansard roof. From there he saw that his accommodation was indeed in a chateau-style turret atop a tower, exposed and solitary, on the farthest side of the Grange from the entrance.

  The rambling property was constructed in a combination of Elizabethan herringbone brick and Queen Anne styles. It was surrounded by gravelled courtyards and landscaped lawns and stone terraces, and wrought-iron gated and walled parterre. There were flower and rose, and greenhoused kitchen, and herb, gardens; and a bulrush-lined moat patrolled by various species of wildfowl including mallard, teal, widgeon, and moorhens, and on which two black swans were sailing with their wings arched over their backs.

  Beyond the main courtyard with its fountain, and the hump-backed bridge, and areas of massive rhododendrons and other shrubbery, was an extensive parkland containing massive wide-spaced specimen trees, some of the aged limbs of which had been lopped and some propped up. Contained by a ha-ha and iron rail fences within the great park were herds of shaggy longhorn beef cattle, and milk cows, and a flock of sheep, and some paddocks with horses. Fallow deer were grazing on the edge of an area of woodland abutting a large lake.

  Beyond the perimeter of the estate, interspersed by clearings was mile on mile of forest that stretched all the way to the northern range of hills at the horizon...which was strange because such natural density had not existed since mediaeval times.

  There was no sign of any settlements or other buildings, or people.

  The scenic part of Dark’s dream had ended abruptly, when he felt a rush of air above his head, and looked up to see an enormous white-feathered bird like a giant dove, swooping down upon him. Knocked off balance by the bird’s wings, he lost his grip and fell. Whether he hit the ground or not he did not know, for that was the end of his out-of-body experience and he had no recollection of anything further until he woke up.

  That it was obviously such a beautiful morning made it easier for Dark to put his nightmare, if that was what it was, out of mind. Throwing back the bedcovers he swung out his legs, and as his feet met the floor they slid into a pair of sheepskin slippers that he had not noticed the night before. Hurrying to the window, he twisted the handles of the twin panes and pushed them open, to a flurry and clap of wings as the sparrows and starlings under the eaves and a pigeon took flight.

  Everything that the reverend could see from leaning out the window, though the breadth and width of his view was much restricted, down to the last detail was as he remembered it from his nocturnal vision.

  The sound of footsteps approaching the door, and the clatter of something being set down preparatory to the door being opened, caused Dark’s trepidation as to what the purpose of the visit might be to be mingled with ire; for already he considered the room his own to the point of valuing its privacy.

  But when ffanshawe unlocked the door and poked in his ferrety head, the prisoner was sitting on the bed with his hands folded and looking composed. Satisfied that he was not to be ambushed, Lady Enderby’s servant entered bearing a tray, which he set down on the table. There was a pot of coffee on it, cup and saucer, a bowl of porridge and pitcher of milk, a sugar caster, a wicker basket of hard and soft bread-rolls, several pots of jam and marmalade, and a dish of rolled butter pats on ice.

  Neither party greeted the other, and after a quick look around the room ffanshawe left.

  When he had breakfasted Dark went to the bathroom and, delighted to find that there was plenty of hot water, conducted his ablutions with a thoroughness that he had never bothered with at home until the day of his first visit to the Grange, whereafter it had become part of his routine minus the hair-colouring.

  After he had bathed and shaved, he pulled the chair to the window and sat looking out. As the sun moved around the tower he was not conscious of the passage of time, nor of being bored or restless; and the next time he heard ffanshawe outside, he was astonished to see from his watch—which, having ascertained that there was no clock in his room, he had made sure to wind last night—that he had been sitting for nearly three hours without getting up.

  He had been brought soup, a turkey sandwich with mustard and mayonnaise, a green salad with French dressing, a slice of fruitcake, and a small pitcher of home-made lemonade.

  There was also a message on the familiar tinted paper; the content of which, as well as the terse language it was couched in, could not have been more different from the only other written communication that he had received from Lady Enderby, that introducing herself to him. Rather than causing a rueful comparison in Dark’s mind, this brought on another twinge of resentment.

  ’fletcher—

  Child Roland to the dark tower came,

  His word was still Fie, foh, and fum,

  I smell the blood of a British man.

  King Lear [Are you mad yet?]

  Negatively living as I am to return to continue my ecclesiastical venture without your participation, it’s going to have to wait. The politics at HQ has proved to be greater than anticipated. So I’m going to leave you stewing in your own juice for a while and a little longer.

  In dark of which this is just a note to advise that ffanshawe has refused to go traipsing upstairs two or three times a day. He will therefore be jury-rigging a rope and pulley system outside your window, by which means he will hoist your meals, firewood, laundry, etc., up to you and take things down as necessary. The basket will be lowered immediately prior to the next delivery from below, so be sure to have it loaded in time. Expect no luxuries and a lot of cold collations.

  Don’t say I don’t look after you.

  A word to the unwise: don’t push your luck with ffanshawe, he’s your lifeline. And don’t even think of trying to escape; the rope wouldn’t bear a tenth of your weight, even after the diet you’re going to be on for the unforeseeable future.

  More in undue course, old horse.

  violet Enderby

  As advised, the enigmatic warder had come prepared. A box of hardware, and a spoked wheel that looked as though it came from a child’s bicycle, without the tyre, were slung across his back. He was also carrying coils of rope over his shoulder. ffanshawe climbed out of the window with the equipment as coolly as if he was walking out of the door.

  For the next half hour Dark could hear him moving about on the roof as sure-footedly as a Mohawk Indian construction wor
ker on the scaffold of a New York skyscraper, as he drove spikes into the masonry with a wooden mallet, affixed the wheel and pulley, attached the rope, and tested the apparatus as he departed by abseiling down the tower very fast.

  That evening just before sunset a bell rang from below, and Dark looked out and saw a wicker hamper being hauled up from the ground. When it arrived he found it to contain supper: a covered plate of chicken curry with basmati rice, a flask of coffee, and some fruit. Under less constrained circumstances, he thought, this might not be such a bad way to live, for the quality of the service and food up to this point, though simple, was superior to anything that he was accustomed to receiving at home from the Barts!; and it had the advantage that he did not have to be in ffanshawe’s presence.

  So he resolved to put a brave face on the situation, and hope that Lady Enderby would quickly be successful in whatever enterprise it was that she had under way; possibly thereby so improving her humour that she would be moved to release him and restore him to favour.

  He was already missing his rides in the Jaguar. And as Kipling said, while a woman was only a woman, a good cigar was a smoke.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Seven years later, seventy pounds lighter, and still in the tower, Dark had received no further communication from Violet to indicate whether or not his sentence might ever be lifted. Had it not been for the continued presence of ffanshawe below, he would...in addition to being dead...have believed that he was forever forsaken, and that the tower was to be his version of Alexandre Dumas’ Château D’If.

  As time went on, Dark wondered what his reaction might have been if, at the outset of his incarceration, he had known that he was to be indefinitely deprived of human contact, Cordon Bleu cooking, vintage port, and trips in volatile motor cars. Most odd to him, under the circumstances, was that from the beginning he never felt like le Comte de Monte-Cristo, or the Prisoner of Zenda.

  As unsociable a person as he was, or thought he was, by nature, never having had any friends, he was neither lonely nor bored. If the place had been offered to him, lodging and board all found, he might have chosen to live as he was now. The pigeons, sparrows, tits, and starlings that came to his window, and the occasional cold-weather singleton of rarer species, he fed crumbs and scraps not because he wanted company but because they were alive, like him.

  He had everything that he needed by way of provisions and the staples of existence. The world was literally at his feet, he had no obligations, and he was indebted to no one. There was nothing to be ambitious or greedy for, because it could not be obtained; there was no one to hurt or plot against him and no one to hurt or plot against; there was nothing selfish about his existence, except that it was being lived solo, and that was perforce; there was nothing to be gained at another’s expense any more than there was anything to be lost because he had nothing to lose.

  Unlike those endowed with the power of choice, he had no decisions to make and anguish over as to whether they had been the right ones, no need to wonder what might have happened had he travelled the road not taken.

  As a plant is drawn to grow towards the light and a river flows to the sea, the direction of Fletcher Dark’s new life was neither straight nor winding. It had no direction, there was no means of propelling it, nowhere for it to go. It was neither good nor evil, nor amoral, because motivational action was denied him and his situation was not conducive to extremes of thought. He was a kept man, dependent on others for his existence and subsistence.

  Sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, the five senses, at first were everything. While his moral and ethical senses, his judgment, and his emotional capacity to desire, to hate, to love, to be jealous or angry, were not dulled or relinquished, such faculties, along with knowledge and experience, had become redundant.

  But as the hearing and touch of a blind man become more sensitive conduits of perception than his careless sight had ever been, over time Dark’s mind became a tabula rasa, a blank slate, as it was cleared of preconceptions and preoccupations and he morphed into an eighteenth century “noble savage”, or “nature’s gentleman”. As he observed nature from his confinement, his thoughts and imagination roamed farther than they had ever done, farther than they ever would have had he remained at liberty.

  The days that became weeks, and the weeks months, and the months years, were not difficult to tolerate, because from the outset they did not seem monotonous. Hours, minutes, seconds: the longevity or brevity of artificial subdivisions made none of greater or lesser importance than the others.

  Every morning when Dark got up he was filled with eagerness, and, as dawn light causes a flower to open, he was from that moment susceptible to the influence of whatever new things might present themselves to him; and if they did not he was not disappointed. His days were distinguished and made memorable by details that, in the ordinary run of life, a person might not have noticed; or if they did, assigned any importance to.

  Once the temperature and level of humidity had established a context, everything that he saw from the window, his sole outlook, was important, and there was so much to take in: the seasonal dress of the trees and hedges and grass and leaves and plants; the fields as he followed them from fallow to rotational crop to stubble to under the plough; the rain, whether it pattered or showered or coursed or pelted down or drove aslant in sheets; the angle and strength of the sun upon the land and the tone and colour of the light; the sky in all its moods and aspects of vacancy or pacifism or threat, and its reflective hue; the myriad shapes and forms of the clouds in all their meteorological definitions, densities, and speeds; the fogs and mists and frosts and snows; the breezes, March winds, gales, storms, and the thunder and lightning blitzkrieg assaults of wind and rain and sky together when it was impossible to tell whether they were allies or combatants with each other.

  Because the components of the scene were never the same and each combination sent different signals to his brain, made different impressions, Dark could not bear not to be looking outside for the greater part of the day and periods of the night for fear of missing something. That picture view from his window was as Mont Sainte-Victoire had been to Cézanne: always demanding to be painted again and framed into unique permanence. Seated at the window, the features of the landscape became so imprinted upon the reverend’s mind that they were integrated into the furniture of his mind.

  But as familiar as they were he never took them for granted because they were changeable, never looked the same, and were therefore subject to different interpretations. Everything that he saw spoke to him differently and acted to modify his perception of what had gone before and give him a deeper appreciation of it, whilst opening another novel prospect to look forward to becoming acquainted with.

  Sometimes he felt like an actor on a stage, who, instead of being the one to declaim and act, finds that he is the one being addressed, individually by each member of the audience, separately and intelligibly. And sometimes the sound got so loud that he had to cover his ears and concentrate on something else very hard, such as watching a spider making its web in a corner of the room with as much concentration as he was devoting to observing it.

  Since he was allowed pen and paper, Dark kept a daily diary in the form of letters to himself; sometimes a couple of lines, sometimes pages. The process of setting down words, any words, became as important to him as if he was corresponding with another person, and increasingly he was, with another version of himself.

  While he was thus engaged half a day might seem as an hour, though he could not verify either because he stopped winding his watch. He did not care for Greenwich Mean Time, he cared when the sun rose and when it set and what happened in between. And after dark he had no need of light: so familiar was he with his surroundings that he could find his way around and reach out and touch every thing and surface without searching for it.

  Some of the letters were short and pithy, and others long and rambling; and the more Dark wrote the better he got to underst
and the invisible strangers who walked in at all times of day and night without introducing themselves. The education was haphazard but gradual: when he sat down to write he had no idea what he was going to say, but that did not stop him from writing. He wrote about whatever topic came to mind, practical or theoretical or philosophical, irrespective of its relevance to his condition or situation.

  When at later dates he dipped into his earlier efforts he was surprised at how many increasingly complex questions he asked himself and expected an answer to.

  ffanshawe was the exclusive source of the reverend’s victuals, clean clothes, toilet paper—of everything. Though Dark was never much indisposed or hurt, and was out of reach of most viruses and infections, and had little need for medical supplies, he could ask for aspirin and cough syrup and Band-Aids, and they would be sent up.

  Such applications were passed down by note, and did not receive any reply other than the presence or absence of the item requested in the next basket. Luxuries of any kind were not forthcoming, nor did he ask for them, not because it was a point of pride not to or out of embarrassment but owing to a new delight in frugality. There was no alcohol or tobacco, and nothing sweet other than pudding; there were no newspapers or magazines or books, and no radio.