Sanctuary

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘A way. A path,’ he said firmly.

  ‘And you found it here?’

  He nodded.

  ‘The therapists helped you.’

  He stiffened a little. ‘The Director.’

  ‘Oh, I see. What’s he like?’

  ‘You’ll see him later.’ He was gazing into the distance, walking more quickly now.

  Leo didn’t want him to subside into silence. ‘So you were in a state of crisis when you arrived and the Director put you right..’

  ‘He showed me the way, yes.’ He corrected her, his lips curled with just a trace of contempt. ‘The path to wisdom.’

  ‘Evolution. The path to wisdom,’ she mused.

  ‘Yes. A life free of craving. Peace. To feel at one with the world.’

  Leo met his eyes with what she hoped was a soulful expression. ‘My Australian friend Iris told me about the Sanctuary. That’s what she was looking for too.’

  ‘Iris? The Australian. No, no,’ he blurted out. ‘She was underhand. She was secretly writing an exposé. That’s why—’ He stopped himself. In the distance a gong had sounded. ‘Come Leonora,’ he set up a pace too brisk for conversation.

  Leo followed and wondered whether Isabel had perhaps let slip that she was writing a book on therapies. That wasn’t like her.

  It was too late to question William directly any further. They had arrived at the dining hall, an austere, high-ceilinged room, where despite the rows of people already seated at the long pine tables, a resonant hush prevailed. William directed Leo to a gap and made to hurry off.

  She had the distinct sense that the extra speed in his step meant that he was scurrying off to report their conversation to some higher authority. Good, she thought to herself. She wanted everyone to know that she was interested in Iris Morgenstern.

  She slipped into her place and smiled at the man next to her and said hello. He was about thirty-five, his narrow head bullet smooth above lowered eyes and a hawk nose. He nodded at her then brusquely returned his attention to the heaped greens and carrots, tomatoes, celery and fruit that made up the evening meal. These he chewed with a studied slowness, as if each leaf were a rosary bead. The woman on her right, whom she addressed next, was no more forthcoming, though she by contrast, ate with furtive haste and then sat with her face fixed to her plate.

  From behind her, Leo thought she heard an explosion of laughter, but when she turned there was no one there, though the gong had sounded again, loud in here. Isabel, she suddenly thought. Isabel watching the theatre of the place and giving her a little nudge of fellow feeling, urging her to rise with the others.

  Leo trailed behind the bullet-headed man. They were outside for a moment in the still air of a courtyard. Then the file brought her inside the canopied area at its centre. The rows of chairs were already largely filled - enough of them for some sixty to eighty people, she estimated. She sat down quickly.

  On the platform at the front, stood a large, raw boned, man. His receding white-gold hair gave him a wealth of brow and flowed down to his shoulders where it blended with a white-gold beard. The ever-present uniform was smoothed over a generous paunch. The eyes were a dazzling blue, the smile beamed beneficence. Softly illuminated by spotlights, he had the look of a biblical sage or an ancient Viking bound on a sea-faring mission. He stretched out his arms dramatically and began to speak in a resonant voice.

  ‘Welcome. A special welcome to all our new friends at the Morning Star Sanctuary.’ His eyes landed on various members of the audience, including the woman with the swooping sunglasses, and seemed to pause over-long on Leo. She looked down at her feet as his voice boomed above her.

  ‘Sanctuary - an asylum, a refuge, a safe place where you can shed the dross and conflict of everyday life and focus on essentials, on the cosmic journey. A place where everything combines to reinvigorate the body, balance the psyche, awaken the spirit. All of us, with all our various skills, are here to help you attain those ends - to help you evolve, to help you heal, to open new frontiers, to set you on the right path, the path of truth, of success.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Leo whispered to her neighbour.

  The woman replied with a look that suggested she must be a Martian not to know. ‘The Director. F.F. Hilton.’

  Leo was about to pose another question, but the woman put a finger to her lips.

  The Director’s voice was soft now, so that the room itself seemed to strain to hear him.

  ‘Many of you are here because you are in some kind of crisis and in search of health, an equilibrium. Life can be difficult. It is often hard to bear. In the midst of it we are too often like children: our desires are great burning passions which demand instant satisfaction. But desires change. That is the first point to take in on your evolutionary journey. What made us happy yesterday no longer does so today. Cravings are impermanent.’

  Leo leaned forward as the giant of a man strode across the dais, addressing them now from its far corner.

  ‘Poisons are at the source of unhappiness. They need to be expunged. The poison of ignorance which leads us blindly to believe that the next purchase, the next lover, the next job will bring us satisfaction or peace. Too often, it doesn’t.’

  The man moved back to the centre of the platform and his voice rose theatrically.

  ‘The poison of attachment. Attachment to a person, to status, to money - to a way of seeing, a pattern of behaviour which is repetitive, a compulsive habit. Such attachments trap us. We become possessed by our possessions.

  ‘Now let me tell you why you are really here. You are here to learn to let go. To learn to relinquish your psychological habits - that armour of conditioning which has kept you trapped in blindness and misery.’ He stretched out his arms as if to embrace them. His eyes rose to the light. ‘Everything you do here will contribute to the evolution of this new stronger you. Let me feel your gathered energy…’

  Leo had stopped listening. It had hit her with a visceral blow like a punch in the stomach. All the air had been knocked out of her. This man, this F.F. Hilton was Isabel’s father. She was certain of it. The eyes, the stature. Something about the set of the jaw, as he walked down the steps of the dais now and along the far aisle of the lecture hall.

  Watching him closer to, a second realization struck her. She had seen this man before. Seen him in a different guise, not the white-garbed leader then.

  His eyes landed on her and she averted her own, not too soon to see him nod with that inclination of the head which turned the gesture into a slight bow.

  Did he know his daughter was dead, Leo wondered.

  She looked back towards him. His gaze was elsewhere. It fell on a figure with a cap of short, waving black hair some three rows in front of her. The figure turned suddenly to reveal a young face of wildly passionate beauty, high cheekbones, deep-set eyes, a generously curved mouth and the palest of matt skins. A flush crept up the girl’s neck and suffused her face, as if she were a child who had been found out in some secretly sinful activity. A second later, she pushed her chair back and bolted, intent on fleeing the Director’s eyes. After a moment, he, too, rose and was gone.

  Heather, Leo suddenly noticed, had been sitting beside him and as she stared after him, her lips curled in an expression Leo couldn’t read.

  Meanwhile the bullet-headed man she had sat next to at dinner was addressing them from the platform. Leo half-listened to his words as she tried to stem her mounting confusion. F.F. Hilton was also the man she had seen talking to Paola Webster and again to Daniel at the Freud Museum. He had been black-suited then, his hair tied back in a tail like some ageing Microsoft executive. Were they all in cahoots together?

  ‘Take water,’ the man on the platform was saying. We can say of water that is it a colourless liquid essential to life or a chemical substance made up of two parts of hydrogen to one part of oxygen. But is this really and only what water is? Splash it on your face, drink it, take a bath in it. Experience it through all your senses - sight, touch,
taste. Feel the wetness. Then remember that you too are what water is, a mobile column of water. Water is your tissues and your blood, your heart, your lungs, your brain, your skin. It is not just something out there, but in here.’ He pounded his heart, his stomach, his hips with abrupt force. ‘There is no distinction between inner and outer.’

  Leo gripped the edge of her chair. There had been no distinction between inner and outer for Isabel either, but it had hardly been a happy lack. The water had been inside her, bloating her skin, stopping the action of her lungs, covering her in its force, killing her.

  ‘You are earth too — iron, copper, phosphorous, magnesium. Without these minerals you would die. Each of them is identical to the minerals in the earth. There is no real difference between the copper in your body and the copper in a pot. And all of these minerals come from the stars. We are star dust, star children. Not only the lights that twinkle in the heavens, the stars are also our flesh and bone.’

  Leo scraped her chair back so loudly that her neighbours turned round. Without meeting their eyes, she brushed past knees and padded from the room.

  Star dust, star children. Morning Star. Morgenstern.

  It came to her that she needed to speak to Faraday urgently to find out what the autopsy had revealed. What was inside Isabel, apart from water, that had once been outside? Did it bear any resemblance to what had been inside Jill Reid?

  In the chill air of the courtyard, she paused to roll up the trouser bottoms which flapped round her feet and slowed her down. It was as she bent to their thick cotton that it flashed through her with the force of an epiphany. Hadn’t that bloated corpse which wasn’t Isabel worn the discoloured remnants of flapping trousers. A white shirt, too.

  Disquiet flooded through her. Blood rang in her ears.

  ‘Is there anything wrong?’ William was suddenly in front of her.

  ‘I need to telephone,’ Leo said bluntly.

  Disapproval glimmered in his eyes. ‘We have no telephones here for guest use. Here we let go of such things. It is better that way.’

  ‘But I need to,’ Leo insisted.

  ‘You will have to speak to Heather then. Or Olga. After the lecture.’ His sigh was audible.

  Leo made for her room. His soft tread was right behind her. He reminded her about putting her things in store. It would do her good to shed unnecessary possessions.

  Leo gave him the suit she had arrived in and her small store of jewellry, just to get rid of him, then sat down wearily on the bed.

  No telephones for guest use. The words echoed in her ears and with them came the sound of Isabel’s voice, pitched in wryness now and tinged with a heart-rending weariness.

  ‘Not easy to ring you and explain, Leo,’ she murmured. ‘Not easy.’

  19

  Leo dreamt. She dreamt herself in a steep tropical clime of lush vegetation and terraced rice paddies. Her father was with her holding her hand as he urged her forward across a swaying foot-bridge. Beneath them the valley plunged into a winding river. She didn’t want to cross over. She took tiny steps. Her feet were small, too, white in new trainers edged with red earth. Look straight ahead, her father advised. She did. On the far gorge, she saw a brightly-robed woman balancing a load on her head, one arm raised in a graceful curve. In the blink of an eye, the basket slipped. It fell to the ground with a clang. Like bells. Bells everywhere. And then the woman fell after it, tumbling, tumbling towards the swift flow of the river. She wanted to race after her, but her father held her back.

  She woke with a start, dry-mouthed, the imprint of her father’s hand still warm on hers and the bells echoing. At the edge of the window, against a flat grey expanse of sky, she made out the curve of a slope. It brought her back to where she was and alerted her to the gong’s morning call.

  She lay there, putting the pieces of her present self together again, assembling her thoughts for the day that awaited her. A knock at the door jarred her into complete wakefulness.

  ‘Leonora. Your meeting with Heather is for nine, straight after breakfast. She will arrange your schedule. I shall wait for you in the dining hall.’

  ‘I’ll be there, William.’ She forced her voice into brightness. ‘Don’t you worry.’

  But Leo worried. Ever since she had noticed last night that her whites bore a resemblance to the tattered trousers on Isabel’s corpse, a host of suspicions had taken hold of her. She needed to talk to the Director immediately. Depending on what he said, she would share her fears with him. Or not. Someone in this establishment could well be implicated in Isabel’s death. She was certain of it. She also needed to telephone Faraday.

  ‘Leonora. So pleased we could find a place for you at such short notice.’ Heather’s cool blondeness confronted her almost before William’s knock had sounded.

  Leo looked at her. There was no irony in the woman’s voice or face.

  ‘I guess I am, too,’ Leo replied.

  They were in an airy rectangle of a room on the top floor of the building. A single branch of gorse stood in a glass vase on the corner of a desk with two chairs. On the floor there was a mat. From somewhere she heard the tinkle of chimes.

  ‘I need to get some details, since you’re a first time guest.’ Heather sat down at the desk and motioned her to the other chair. With brisk efficiency, she grilled her on her medical history, her smoking and drinking habits, all charted on a neat form. She asked her to walk up and down, breathe deeply, touch her knees and her toes. Every now and again she placed a hand on her spine as she did so.

  ‘Good. Now lie down please.’ She gestured to the mat.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Please.’

  Heather worked her hands up from Leo’s ankle to knee, pressing hard as she went.

  ‘Ouch.’ Leo exclaimed.

  ‘Good. I’m doubly glad you’re here.’

  ‘Why, is there something wrong?’

  ‘A little less suspicion, Leonora, and all will go well.’ Heather was busily filling in a schedule sheet. ‘You’re toxic. Lay off the coffee and tea. Drink a lot of water, at least a litre a day. I’m booking you in for deep massage, yoga, Tai Chi, and of course, daily meditation. That’s first thing in the morning. You need it, believe me.’

  ‘What did Iris do while she was here?’ Leo asked abruptly.

  A shadow passed over the woman’s face. It was gone as quickly as it had come and she answered evenly, ‘That’s something you’ll have to ask her.’

  For a split second, Leo was about to blurt out that she couldn’t ask her. Couldn’t ask her because she was dead. She pulled the zipper on her mouth. Not yet. It wasn’t time. ‘What’s F.F. Hilton’s background?’ she asked instead.

  Heather’s formidable eyebrow arched. Leo noticed that it was thick and matt, like mouse fur. ‘That’s a question to put to him. You’ll be seeing him in a moment.’ She handed Leo the schedule sheet. ‘You fill in the rest of this with the Director. You’re a privileged woman, Leonora. He doesn’t always see first time guests personally.’

  An image of Hilton talking to Paola and then to Daniel at the launch party leapt into Leo’s mind. ‘My referral has obviously had an effect on the murkiness of my aura,’ she said with a touch of spite.

  Heather refused the bait. She was looking just beyond her. ‘The Director’s office is on the other side of the stairs.’

  Leo didn’t move. ‘I need to use a telephone, Heather. There’s some business I left unfinished.’

  ‘You’re here to get away from business, Leonora. And Frederick Hilton is not a man to be kept waiting.’

  The woman was already urging her through the door, where William lurked, her very own stalker.

  ‘Please, I …’

  ‘If it still feels so urgent after you’ve seen the Director, come back at …let’s see,’ Heather glanced down her schedule, ‘four-fifty.’ She gave Leo her crisp, businesslike smile and turned to the woman who was coming up the stairs. ‘Welcome back, Maxine.’

  A few moments later,
Leo found herself in a lofty room with breathtaking views on three sides. She was in one of the building’s eccentric gables, she realized. The entire extent of the grounds and the countryside beyond were spread before her. Below, the couple coming up the drive, looked like children. In the middle distance, beyond the razor straight divide of cypresses, she could see a small lake. White-clad figures moved slowly in its vicinity. That had to be the addiction clinic, she noted, and there too everyone wore the regulation uniform.

  The room had all the makings of a panopticum. A panopticum with an interior designed by a West Coast minimalist. Vast sofas in thick linen of varying creamy stripes decked the large space. An off-white carpet straddled the glistening beach floor. The stretches of wall between the windows held geometrical abstracts in pastel shades which she determined after a moment, might equally well be meditational symbols. One angle of the room was given over to a straight-edged desk of thick beech.

  The Director emerged from a door behind it. Close-to, he looked even bigger, a mountain of a man. The beneficent face beamed at her, like a child’s drawing of the sun, as he stretched out his hand.

  ‘Leonora. Welcome to Sanctuary.’

  Leo offered him a tentative smile. He took her hand and grasped it warmly.

  ‘I wanted to see you personally to ascertain that we offered you the best possible week here. I haven’t yet had the opportunity to speak to Dr Lukas…’

  Leo had an image of Daniel refusing to pick up his telephone or return calls.

  ‘Am I correct in assuming that he referred you here principally because of the trauma group I run? That meets in the hour before lunch-time.’

  Leo swallowed the protest she had been about to make and nodded. She wasn’t here to protest, but to investigate.

  He walked back to his desk and as he did so, she took in his profile - the distance between eye and brow, the slight flare of the nose, the smooth expanse of cheek before it edged into the white-gold beard. Yes, if she whittled away the flesh, the resemblance was definitely there.

  She was working herself up to posing the question when she noticed his feet. They were oddly small for his bulk, dapper in soft leather. They brushed the floor with a distinctively flat-footed amble. She stared at them with a sudden frown.