by Paul Hoffman
‘She’s not my friend.’
‘… is she looks sort of familiar.’
Cadbury changed the subject.
‘You might want to think about coming with us.’
‘Me? I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘I don’t think the old dear who runs this place will think that.’
‘I’m not worried about her.’
‘You can’t stay here. They won’t stop.’
‘I know the Redeemers a lot better than you do. I’ll have to have a think.’
‘Got a message for Kitty?’
Cale laughed. ‘Tell him I’m grateful. And to you, and your mad friend.’
‘I told you, she’s not my friend, and I’m not sure Kitty is looking for gratitude exactly. You might be safer in Leeds than anywhere else.’
‘P’raps I’ll look you both up next time I’m there.’
And that was that.
Next morning the Director arrived with Sister Wray and flew into an almighty rage. ‘They overpowered me,’ said Cale, and that was all. There was much shouting and a good deal of personal abuse, and even more when it became clear that the two fugitives had been responsible for three further deaths, all of which had to be explained to the magistrate from Heraklion. They locked Cale up for three days, but as he had patently had nothing to do with the murders in the town and, as Sister Wray pointed out with considerable force, he’d been the intended victim in the cloisters, they were forced to let him go. The Director gave Cale one week’s notice to leave on the entirely justifiable grounds that he posed a serious risk to everyone at the Priory.
‘To be honest,’ he said to Sister Wray, ‘I was a bit surprised she gave me as long as that. I should thank you, no?’
‘I thought it was only fair,’ she said. ‘Where will you go? Don’t tell me.’
He laughed at the change of direction. ‘Not sure. I could go north but I hear it’s grim up there. Besides, Bosco won’t leave me alone wherever I go. Probably Cadbury was right, I’m safer in Spanish Leeds than wandering about in the bundu.’
‘I don’t know what a bundu is but you’re not well enough to be on your own – or anything like it.’
‘Then it’s settled. Leeds it is.’
‘Can I ask you to promise me one thing?’
‘You can ask.’
‘Stay away from that Kitty the Hare person.’
‘Easier said than done. I need money and power and Kitty has both.’
‘IdrisPukke cares for you – stick with him.’
‘He doesn’t have money or power. And he has his own problems.’
There was a moment’s silence. Sister Wray went over to a cupboard in which there were many small drawers and opened two of them before placing two packets on the table, one sizeable, the other small.
‘This is Tipton’s Weed.’ She opened the packet and poured a tiny amount into the palm of her hand. ‘Use this much in a cup of boiling water, let it cool and drink it every day at the same time. You’ll be able to get it from any herbalist in Spanish Leeds but they will call it Singen’s Wort or Chase-Devil.’
‘What’s it for?’
‘It helps to chase away the devil. It will help you feel better – even things out. If you start to feel dizzy or sensitive to the light cut down the dose till it stops. It’s good for wounds as well.’
She tapped the other packet twice. ‘This is Phedra and Morphine. I’ve thought more than twice about giving you this.’ She opened the packet and tipped a tiny amount of green and white speckled powder onto the table then, picking up a small knife, separated enough to cover a fingernail. ‘Take this when you’re desperate. As desperate as you were the other night, not otherwise. It will give you strength for a few hours. But it builds up in the body so if you take it for more than a few weeks what you’ve suffered over the last few months will feel like a minor inconvenience. Do you understand?’
‘I’m not stupid.’
‘No. But the time is coming, I guess, when it may seem the lesser of two evils. Take it for more than three weeks in all – I mean twenty doses – and you’ll find out it probably isn’t.’
‘Take it all now,’ said Poll. ‘Put yourself and the rest of the world out of its misery.’
Telling Poll to keep quiet, Sister Wray took Cale through the boiling up of the Tipton’s and made him count out the Phedra and Morphine into twenty lots so he could see how little he could take. There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in.’ One of the Priory servants entered.
‘Please, Sister,’ said the girl, clearly excited. ‘A beautiful woman in a carriage is asking for Thomas Cale. She has soldiers and servants dressed a la mode and with white horses. The Director says he’s to come at once.’
‘Who do you …?’ But Sister Wray was already talking to Cale’s back.
12
It’s one of the greatest mistakes of the cultivated person to take it as given that because they have sophisticated minds they also have sophisticated emotions. But what kind of soul feels sophisticated hatred or sophisticated grief for, say, a murdered child? Is the broken heart of the educated and refined person different from that of the savage? Why not say that the enlightened and knowledgeable feel the pain of childbirth, or the kidney stone, in a different way to unpolished commoner or chav? Intelligence has many shades, but rage is the same colour everywhere. Humiliation tastes the same to everyone.
As for Cale’s heart, it was as much a sophisticated as a savage thing. No grand master in the game of chess possessed the subtle skills that Cale had at his command when reading a landscape – how to defend or to attack it, or to adjust that reading in a second because of a change in the wind or rain, how to finesse the known and unknown rules of a battle that can be altered by the gods at any time without consent or consultation. Life itself, in all its horror and incomprehensibility, plays out in even the simplest skirmish. Who was cooler or more intelligent than Cale in this most terrible of human trials? But this prodigy of the complexity of things rushed down the stairs, heart bursting with hope: She’s come back to throw herself on my forgiveness. Everything will be explained. I’ll turn her down and threaten her. I’ll treat her as if I can’t remember her. I’ll wring her neck. She deserves it. I’ll make her weep.
Then sanity of a kind returned: What if it’s not her? What if it’s someone else? Who else could it possibly be? She wants something. She won’t get it. And on it went, the madness breaking inside him as both his wild and intelligent hearts contended with each other for command. He stopped and found himself breathing hard. ‘Get some grasp,’ he said aloud. ‘Control yourself, take it easy. Simmer down and keep your head.’
He was sweating. Maybe, he thought, it was that tea she gave me. Don’t go in like this. Then the insanity returned. Perhaps she’ll leave if I come late. Perhaps she happened to be passing and she came in on a whim and she’s already regretting it. She might just leave, worrying about what I’ll do. And then the greater madman visited. She’s come to laugh at me, knowing she is safe now that I’m sick and weak.
But pride of a kind won out over even madness, fear and love. He went back to his room, washed quickly in the basin – he needed to – and changed his shirt. Slowly, because of the fear that he might again sweat too much, he made his way to the Director’s office. Another moment outside the door to gather himself. Then the firm knock. Then the entrance before the words ‘Come in’ were halfway out of the Director’s mouth. And there she was – Riba not Arbell. Break, fracture, split, fragment and smash. What did his poor heart not endure? It was all he could do to stop a cry of dreadful loss. He stood quite still, staring at her.
‘Would you mind terribly if I spoke to Thomas alone?’ she said to the Director. In other circumstances Cale would have been astonished, even if pleasantly, at the gracious tone of Riba’s request and the clear understanding by both women that it could not be confused for the kind of question to which the answer might be ‘No’. The tone of her voice was one of charming
and implacable authority. The Director simpered in obedience to Riba, looked malignantly at Cale and left, closing the doors behind her. A silence followed, weighty with strange emotions, all of them horrible.
‘I can see you were expecting someone else,’ she said at last. ‘I’m sorry.’ It’s true that she was sorry to see him so disappointed and so ill, the circles around his eyes so dark – but it was also true that she was put out at being the cause of such terrible disappointment. It was not flattering, particularly when she had expected to surprise him with delight at her wonderful story of love and transformation. But in this legend of pain, misery, slaughter and madness it is as well to be reminded that everything is not for the worst in the worst of all possible worlds, a story where today is bad, tomorrow dreadful until at last the most appalling thing of all happens. There are happy endings, virtue is something rewarded, the kind and generous get what they deserve. This is how it was with Riba. She came into the story of poor, tormented, miserable Cale in the most revolting of ways: bound hand and foot and waiting to be eviscerated in order to satisfy the curiosity of Redeemer Picarbo concerning the bodily source of the monstrous impurity that possessed all women. Riba knew perfectly well, because Cale had constantly reminded her, that he was history’s most reluctant saviour and that if he’d had it to do again he would have left Picarbo to his repellent investigations. She didn’t really believe he’d have left her to die, at least she probably didn’t believe it. You never quite knew what he was capable of. After this narrowest of squeaks, her climb to prominence was remarkably easy. She was a beautiful girl, if unusually plump, but in Memphis beauty was commonplace. Helen of Troy had been born in Memphis and was generally considered to be rather plain compared to others. What brought Riba to the attention of a great many men in the city was that she was kind, good-natured and intelligent, but also that her body, sonsy to the point of fubsy, expressed in flesh the generosity and comfort of her heart. Servant to the hated Arbell (though not hated by Riba), she had been caught as much as her mistress in the fall of Memphis and the dreadful flight from the Redeemers, in which so many of the Materazzi who survived Silbury Hill died from hunger and disease. Though she was still Arbell’s servant when those that remained of the Materazzi stumbled into Spanish Leeds, it was inevitable that her easy charm and wit would bring her the attention of men of every kind and class. And, unlike the Materazziennes, she had the overwhelming advantage of liking men rather than despising them. Such choice she had! She was adored by coal-carriers, butchers, lawyers and doctors, as well as the aristocrats of Memphis and Spanish Leeds. Fortunately for her peace of mind, from among this array of possible futures (bigwig or nonentity?) she fell in love with Arthur Wittenberg, Ambassador to the Court of King Zog and only son of the President of the Hanse, the syndicate of all the wealthy countries of the Baltic Axis. His father opposed their marriage, understandably, until he met her and was so charmed he almost forgot himself and was on the verge of attempting to betray his son in the manner of a Greek tragedy before he pulled himself together and determined to behave. How would storytellers and makers of operas live if everyone was so restrained? At any rate, in a matter of a few months she rose from starving nobody to becoming a woman of vast wealth and enormous political influence.
Still, despite Cale’s shock she was sympathetic to his disappointment – if a little piqued concerning her hurt vanity – and slowly allowed him time to pull himself together by chatting away amusingly, and self-deprecatingly, about her rise to fortune. After an hour or so, Cale was himself again and able to hide his disappointment and his considerable shame over the depth of that disappointment. He was, in the end, pleased to see her, amused by her current good luck while also considering how it might be made use of. She chatted away about the past and had a fund of amusing stories to tell about the absurdity of life amongst the nobility.
‘Was Arbell at your wedding?’
‘She was, and very happy to be so.’
‘I’m sure she probably fitted you in before popping over to the pigman to help feed his porkers. I hear they’re very hard up, the Materazzi.’
‘Not quite so much any more. Conn has become a great darling of the King and he listens to no one else. There’s money about and a position discussed.’
‘What?’
‘The skinder is that he’ll be made second-in-command to General Musgrove to run the army of the entire Axis – if he can get them to agree to fight the Redeemers.’
‘Will they?’
‘Arthur says they’ll talk but do nothing until the Redeemers make a move, by which time it’ll be too late.’
‘Is Vipond employed?’
‘Yes, but not with any of the power he wants or needs. The Swiss have put him out to pasture, Arthur says, and IdrisPukke eats the grass with him.’
Cale looked at her, sizing up any change her good luck might have made in her sympathies towards him.
‘Do you trust your husband – his ability, I mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then do him a good turn and introduce him properly to Vipond and IdrisPukke. He’ll see that they’ve been about their business and he needs them. They need his influence and money.’
‘He’s my husband. I can’t tell him what to do.’
Cale nodded and remained silent, allowing her to realize she had disappointed him, and deeply. As they walked through the gardens, avoiding the cloister, he chatted about the birds and the flowers and what it was like at night to look up at the milk-white road of stars that wheeled across the sky. There was a pause. He laughed. That was good, she thought, he’d let go of the business about Vipond and IdrisPukke.
‘It’s a funny old world,’ he said, casually.
‘Because?’
‘Well, I was thinking how very singular and spooky-like life is – that now you’re a beautiful lady with a great big nabob to look after you, when hardly any time ago you were lying on a wooden table bound and beaten and about to have your giblets spilt all over the shop. What if I’d kept on walking? I was a bad boy in those days – I might have. But I didn’t. I turned around and I …’
‘Very well. Enough. You’ve made your point.’
Cale shrugged. ‘I wasn’t making a point. I was just talking about old times.’
‘I’m well aware of how much I owe you, Cale.’
‘So am I.’
And with that they walked the remainder of the gardens in silence.
The next day he asked Riba to let him return with her to Spanish Leeds.
‘Is it safe?’ she asked.
‘For you?’
‘For you to go back. Are you well enough?’
‘No – I’m not well enough. But it’s not safe here or anywhere. I thought if I got far enough away he’d leave me alone but Bosco’s going to come for me whatever I do.’
Cale was wrong about this but his wrong conclusion was the only reasonable one.
‘You’re going to destroy the Redeemers?’
‘You make me sound mad when you put it like that. Give me another choice and I’ll take it.’
‘You must have travelling clothes and a nice hat.’
‘I’d like a nice hat.’ He thought for a minute. ‘Will I be allowed inside the carriage with you?’
‘You must be more agreeable if you’re going to do great things. Arthur has a lot to teach you. He knows you saved my life and is desperate to repay you. Don’t throw his goodwill away.’
He laughed. ‘Teach me how to behave on the journey. I’ll listen, I promise.’
‘You’d better – your fists can’t protect you now.’
He looked at her. Baleful would be the word.
‘Sorry,’ she said, and laughed. ‘My good luck has made me puffed up and snooty. That’s what Arthur says.’
‘When can we leave?’
‘Tomorrow morning. Early.’
‘How about tomorrow morning, late?’
But even late morning was bad for Cale. He made it glass-eyed into
the coach but laid himself down on the padded seat and fell asleep for more than six hours.
Watching him from a distance was Kevin Meatyard, who had realized that the rumours of the deaths at the Priory must be true and that he was now unemployed as well as unprotected in a town where he was wanted, admittedly for a murder he had not committed. No one in Cyprus was to hear of him for many years, but when they did it was in the hope that he had forgotten all about them. But that’s another story.
The carriage carrying Cale and Riba stopped after four hours’ travel but he refused to be disturbed and Riba and her entourage ate well without him. He woke up slowly an hour after they restarted the journey but it was more like regaining consciousness than emerging from restful sleep. He did not, could not, open his eyes for a good twenty minutes. But there was something pleasurable to be heard: Riba singing and humming softly to herself a song that was the very latest thing in Spanish Leeds.
Please tell me the truth about love,
Is it really true what they sing?
Is it really true what they sing?
That love has no ending?
Come into the shade of my parasol,
Come under the cover of my umbrella,
I will always be true to you,
And you will love me, my love, for ever.
Oh tell me the truth about love,
Is it true or is it lies,
That first love never dies?
But please don’t tell me if it isn’t so,
Please don’t tell me if it isn’t so,
For I don’t want to know,
For I don’t want to know.
He sat up slowly and she stopped singing.
‘Are you sick?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you very sick?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was afraid to ask you, do you have any news of the girls?’
