by Simon Parke
‘Of course.’
‘So it wasn’t as if Barnabus was throwing good money after bad. We were a team, we complimented each other and I’d no doubt we could make a decent profit.’
‘So Mind Gains is more a business than a public good?’ Frances sighed visibly.
‘It has to work as one to be the other. You can’t run a charity on grass cuttings.’
‘Oh, so you’re a charity?’
‘Not exactly, no.’
‘It’s a business?’
‘It’s a business, of course - but a helping business and we deserve a proper salary for our helping skills. I assume you get paid to keep the peace?’
Tamsin returned with a further observation:
‘So we have this public good, this “helping business”, which is all very wonderful.’
There was a ‘but’ in the air.
‘But we also note, Frances that so far, the only member of the public who seems to have benefited is yourself.’
‘I don’t see.’
‘Well, to put it crudely, you now have Barnabus’s investment safely gathered in - and no Barnabus to claim it back.’
Abbot Peter moved uncomfortably as Tamsin continued:
‘If we were being cruel, we might say a more truthful name for Mind Gains would be Frances Gains.’ The reaction was immediate.
‘That’s grossly insulting, utterly ridiculous, you should be ashamed of yourself, Detective Inspector!’
Frances had sprung from her chair, furious.
‘But your hysteria isn’t proving me wrong,’ says Tamsin.
‘Are you going to defend me, Abbot, as a trustee?’
Peter said: ‘No one is condemned by a question, Frances, and the question is this: will you benefit from the death of Barnabus?’
The director of Mind Gains breathed deeply and returned to her chair.
‘I may benefit financially from this tragedy, I don’t know; it hasn’t been an issue much on my mind.’
‘And that simple fact, the fact that you are a beneficiary in this death, is of interest to the police in a murder investigation.’
Frances was calming down.
‘I would never have killed Barnabus.’
‘Why not?’
‘I needed him.’
‘I think we’ve established that,’ says Tamsin.
‘No, I needed Barnabus the man, Barnabus the therapist.’
‘Why? You’re better qualified. You’re much better qualified.’ Frances blushed a little.
‘It’s not a crime to be qualified,’ said Peter.
‘No.’
‘And by all accounts you found his pseudo-spirituality “misguided”,’ continued Tamsin.
‘I did.’
‘So why would you miss him?’
‘He had things I don’t have, I’m very happy to admit that. We must all be accountable.’
‘And these things were?’
‘I don’t have his patience, his, well... love, I suppose.’
‘Love?’
‘I hate most of my clients.’
Pause, but no change of mind as she continued:
‘That’s rather a strong word, but why beat about the bush?’
Peter considered the role of hatred in the life of the therapist and decided it didn’t really have one.
‘The “worried well” I call them,’ she continued. ‘I just want to get them and their whining little lives out of my face. So I needed Barnabus the therapist much more than Barnabus the money man.’ And then a pause before she added, like someone in a soap opera:
‘His real value to me hadn’t come to an end - it was in fact just beginning.’
‘A fine speech,’ said Tamsin. ‘Shame there’s no jury to hear it; I could imagine them being moved.’
‘You don’t believe me?’ Frances was mortified.
‘You’ve spoken very clearly, Frances,’ said Peter. ‘We just need some substance behind your oratory, a few supportive facts.’
Frances was quick to respond:
‘Martin Channing offered me more money than Barnabus ever could.’
Suddenly, another window, with fresh views, was opened.
‘Martin Channing wanted to invest in Mind Gains?’
‘Yes, he did. I didn’t need Barnabus’s money.’
There was noise in the hallway, a commotion outside, the scraping of feet on the black and white marble.
‘I want to see someone!’ shouted a female voice. ‘I’m not going until I see someone!’
‘A client?’ asked Peter.
‘Could be,’ said Frances. ‘The nature of the work is that visitors aren’t always at their best on arrival. Bella will handle it.’
‘You don’t want to see her yourself?’ asked Peter.
‘Bella will handle it,’ said Frances firmly. ‘When you own a dog, you don’t need to bark yourself.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of you barking,’ said Peter. ‘Just a friendly word.’
‘It’s all right’ said the reassuring voice in the hall. ‘Come and sit down over here.’
‘I want to know what happened!’ cried the voice again, in some despair.
There was now the sound of another tussle.
‘There’s no one else in the building,’ said Bella, using a familiar ploy. ‘Perhaps if we went to the kitchen I could make you a cup of tea? And then I’m sure we can find an answer to your problem. But first you must tell me your name...’
Sixty Three
‘I never leave Henry House without feeling I’ve missed something,’ said Tamsin, indicating right as the car passed out of the old stone gate. ‘And it’s not just the dark interior.’
‘When it was built, of course, everyone would have wondered at its light not the dark,’ said Peter.
‘Only the moles.’
They were returning to Stormhaven with a plan in mind, but Peter was still thinking of light.
‘Panes of glass were the big new thing in Elizabethan houses.’
‘Wuppy-doo.’
‘Is that a put-down?’
‘It’s my normal response to history.’ Peter sat with this for a while.
‘They replaced wooden shutters which had made things so claustrophobic.’
‘It still is.’
‘But they had to work for their light, the Elizabethans, because making a pane of glass was a painstaking process.’
‘And you’d know of course.’
‘A blob of glass was blown into a cylinder-shaped bubble.’
‘You do know!’
‘The cylinder was placed on a cooling table and cut in half. A small piece of glass was produced, and gradually, these small pieces were joined together with lead to make a window.’
Tamsin laughs: ‘You actually know how the Elizabethans made their windows?’
‘I do.’
‘You should get out more.’
‘To what end? So I can know less?’
‘No, so that you can know something worth knowing.’
‘And what would that be exactly?’
They drove on in silence.
Awaiting Peter was a conversation with the entrepreneurial investor Martin Channing, who’d kept very quiet about his attempt to buy into Mind Gains. Tamsin, in the meantime, would speak with Virgil Bannaford. Just how angry was he that Mind Gains had taken over his old home? And when he said he was just along for the laugh, was he really telling the truth?
The conversation with Hafiz would have to wait.
Sixty Four
‘We will not speak again, Shah.’
‘No.’
It was a resigned ‘no’, one of acceptance, without attempt
at disagreement.
‘The hours left to me are fewer than the fingers you redeemed, this is my sense,’ said the dying poet. He looked again on his hands, translucent skin and stiffening joints which hadn’t written for a while. ‘You can do nothing for me now.’
‘So even rulers have their limitations?’
‘Rulers are perhaps the most limited of all, Shah Shuja.’
‘I agree. I saved your hands but cannot now save your life.’
‘It’s called old age, I believe.’
The Shah sat with the frail Hafiz in the fading light of the day. It was a final going down of the orange orb and the poet did not expect to see its rising. And welling up inside the Shah, and surprising him, the need to unburden himself, for what did it matter now? He was speaking with a man only hours away from eternity. So what rules of conduct mattered anymore?
No secrets had passed between them down the years - it hadn’t been that sort of relationship. There’d been mutual respect - most of the time at least, respect can come and go - but they hadn’t shared a cup of thick black coffee in their forty years at court, nor pondered the sky together... and certainly shared no secrets. But then for a ruler, who is there but himself? There are no friendships, there can never be, for every friend is a political move, a means rather than a joy. Only the common people have friends ...but the Shah wanted a friend now.
‘Each day,’ he said, ‘each and every day, Hafiz, I am a man who tries to stay standing on sands that shift beneath my feet.’
‘Leadership is a hard calling.’
‘Each day a different stumble, a different threat, a different adjustment. And this is what men call power!’
Years of difficulty and distance melted away as he spoke - the intimacy of two men who had simply known each other a long time... of shared water under the bridge, much water, many bridges, two men clinging to the same lifeboat, the lifeboat of life, so much now unimportant.
Hafiz says: ‘I have enjoyed my hands for these extra years.’ He flexes them weakly once again. ‘I am grateful for your arrival in the market place that day.’
He remembered it well, and he remembered it now, remembered the tugging rope on his wrists, jerking him towards the cutting block, darkly stained with apostate blood... and the curved sword of Dr Saad, the court doctor, his call to healing on hold, the weeping in the crowd, the flames - his poems were still burning as he stood by the block. And then the confident call from Mubariz to proceed, the whispering breath of Karim in his ear, ‘Why did you think you were different?’ - until from the blue, from somewhere, the command to halt!
A slow looking up, a hesitant Doctor, his arms raised, caught between authorities, lowering the sword and then angry words exchanged, the rage of Mubariz, leaping down from his platform towards Hafiz, the quiet fury of Karim, Dr Saad grabbed - if he wouldn’t do it, Mubariz would! And Hafiz tethered like a goat, he’d prefer Dr Saad... and then court guards intervening, thank God for the court guards, he didn’t say that too often, but the Shah had come armed, unsure his mere word would carry the day, for he was wise in that way. As Mohammed said, ‘Trust in Allah - but tether your camel.’
‘Your word against Allah’s?’ Mubariz had raged and the crowd cheered.
Memories now.
‘You must not just remember the battles, Hafiz.’
‘Good words, Shah.’
‘The schemes and the sniping - .’
‘They are nothing to me now, believe me.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. The ghosts, the fears, the empty plots, all the grudges and sorrows, they have passed.’
‘I am glad.’
‘Who knows where to, I knew them well at the time, but they are strangers to Hafiz now. Perhaps they never really existed.’
‘May Allah be praised!’ said the Shah to Hafiz.
‘May Allah be praised,’ said Hafiz to the Shah. ‘And the thing was, I always thought of my writing hand as God’s friend, as a call to prayer.’
‘You have always been a call to prayer for me.’
A further intimacy and Hafiz seemed buoyed by the remark.
‘You forgot to mention that, when you exiled me.’
‘You were a difficult and rude call to prayer.’
There was little to say to this indubitable truth. And now the Shah had a worldlier question on his mind: ‘So tell me, Hafiz, are you still in love?’
Hah! The dying poet turned his face towards the window and the minaret skyline. It was so long ago, a smitten baker’s boy and fifty years between; but yes, he thought of Shakh-e-Nabat every day, the one not given.
‘She stole my past from me, Shah, stripped it bare, left nothing but longing, nothing but dissatisfaction. Of course I am still in love.’
‘Then you made good out of your dissatisfaction.’
‘Maybe I did.’
‘Good rather than hate, hope rather than gloom. Not that I wish to appear congratulator y.’
‘Be as congratulatory as you like! Hafiz can cope with that. I trust I have not been gloomy, I prefer light - it is truer.’
He was watching the disappearing sun sink beneath the Musalla Gardens. Going, going, gone. Would he really never see the sky fire again?
‘It is in loss that we find life.’
‘If you say so, Hafiz.’
‘I do, I do. But loss still haunts, still lingers.’ A pause.
‘And do you fear the, er, change?’ asked the Shah. What is a polite word for death?
Hafiz thought maybe he did. Soon even the maggots and worms would tire of his body and these things are not easy to grasp, despite a life-time of preparation.
‘Maybe I do... to trust in love at the edge of the abyss is a difficult calling... and a sad one. I do not want to let go of my fat body, you see. I realised that in the market place, it is too sacred, too full of God.’
‘It is words like those which get you into trouble.’
‘Not now, not anymore.’
‘So you say.’
‘I am too short-lived for trouble.’
‘So what now?’
‘Now, Shah? Now I become the flame that needs no fuel and the spirit that needs no body.’
‘The flame that needs no fuel?’
‘That will be me!’
The quiet was so comfortable and so calm, unusual for the Shah, that it was a while before he realised Hafiz had gone, had left the room, passed on, passed away, no longer in need of his body. The Shah rose slowly, not young himself, bent down and kissed the poet’s cooling forehead. They’d not been friends, something impossible for a man such as himself, in a court such as this, in a region such as Fars and an empire such as Persia. Though if things could be stated in this way - and begging tolerance for any nonsense perceived - the poet lying before him, known as Hafiz, had been the best friend he’d never had.
Sixty Five
‘Of course you do realise you’re making a prize ass of yourself,’ said Martin Channing. He sat in his minimalist warehouse office with a clean shirt of Cambridge blue, and was king of all he surveyed.
Tamsin had dropped Peter on the outskirts of Lewes. She’d said the walk into town would do him good, despite his six mile run before sunrise. She clearly felt more ‘good’ was necessary.
‘I’ll see you later,’ said the Abbot.
He was happy enough with the arrangement; few things in life gave him quite so much pleasure as mindful walking... no thoughts, just the experience of one foot in front of another, the world unfolding around him. He’d made his monkish way to the offices of the Sussex Silt, found on the industrial estate by the river Ouse, the tidal waterway which cut the ancient town in two. On the opposite bank was a large supermarket, which reminded him that he needed baby wipes and milk. But not before catching a few word
s with Mr Channing.
Their relationship went back a couple of years to his arrival in the town - though really, did the word ‘relationship’ ever apply to Martin? People were entertaining to him, a means to an end, but a relationship? In the early days, Channing had suggested Peter write a piece about his desert experiences. He’d worked hard to produce something good, wondering if one thing might lead to another - only to see it a few days later on page seventeen, under his name but altered beyond recognition and a quarter of the length. Martin had called it ‘minor surgery’, Peter ‘a massacre, with not a single line left standing’.
Like many people, the Abbot was interesting to Martin, but to be kept at an appropriate and playful distance.
‘Do you like the office?’ he asked, as Peter settled.
‘Very warehouse.’
‘They used to make rather solid and dependable river boats here,’ he added. ‘But now I steer a rather different ship.’
‘A Destroyer?’
Channing’s smile was urbane and self-congratulatory, as Peter returned to the matter in hand.
‘No one makes an ass out of themselves by posing a question, Martin.’
Peter had simply asked Channing how eager he’d been to buy into Mind Gains - and been declared an ass for his pains.
‘They do if it’s a stupid question,’ said Martin.
‘And is there such a thing? Surely the crime lies in not seeking rather than not knowing?’
‘Very wise, I’m sure, Peter. In fact, I was thinking of doing a “Thought for the Day” in the Silt.’
Peter is surprised but Channing is not done:
‘I mean, it’s cheap, easy and gives the impression of honour. But then I thought, is anyone really helped by that grandiose nonsense?’
‘I didn’t realise you were trying to help people.’
‘I should definitely employ you, Peter.’
‘In what capacity?’
‘Would it matter?’
‘I have no wish to be a quirky addition to your staff, Martin.’
‘And there I was thinking you were touting for a job.’
‘No.’
‘Really?’
