“Well, that just made them easy pickings. I saw, next to me, an old fellow stop breathing for a moment as if he was frightfully offended, and then he got this odd sort of smile, as if he’d always wanted to do this and suddenly he was being allowed.
“‘We love God,’ someone said, and then they were all nodding, and I heard a lot of people saying ‘God.’
“‘We seek revelation,’ Brother Sheamus said. ‘Is it not so?’
“‘Yes,’ they said.
“‘Well, God has abandoned us. Perhaps it is a test. Perhaps He does not care. Who can say? He is God. He is ineffable. He has done many things in our shared history, but He has never explained Himself. But there is a keener revelation in this world than art and craft. There is a machine which could reveal God. An automated prayer wheel which will show us the truth. But it might… it will do more than that.’
“‘What more?’ they said.
“‘If God has abandoned us—if our creator has left us to our own devices—then this device will draw His eye.’
“‘Draw it?’
“‘The Engine is most compelling. It is like a puzzle to the eye of God, a whirlpool. With it, we will end the silence of God. We will see Him. And He will see us. We will pass His test, and we will come of age. We will demand—demand, as Moses did—we will demand that he speak to us.’
“Well, that was blasphemy, clear and simple, but it didn’t sound like it when he said it then and there, it sounded like a perfectly reasonable thing. They all sat there for a moment as if he’d hit them with a kipper, and then someone shouted ‘Sheamus!’ and then they were all on their feet and shouting and poor Sholt, the little fellow who was supposed to be Keeper, was bundled off the platform and they elevated Sheamus on the spot.
“He didn’t hang about, Joe. He got right to it. That same night he told them to cover their faces as a symbol of God’s disregard, and they did, and somehow there were bits of that horrible gauze ready and anyone who wouldn’t wear it was out into the dark. They tried to take possession of all the other buildings and so on, but someone blocked it, I always assumed it was the government.
“And very soon after that, the Ruskinites became something else. The craftsmen were gone, people we’d known for years were either sent into seclusion or kicked out, and Sheamus brought in his own people, thugs and bullies as lay members, and a whole host of new monks who never spoke. He called them the Cornish Orphans.”
Joe jolts a little in his chair.
“It was a hostile takeover,” Cecily Foalbury says, brokenly. “Well, it was the eighties, wasn’t it?”
Into the mournful quiet, Joe ventures a last question. “Cecily… the friend who took you along…”
“Yes,” she mutters. “It was. It was your grandfather, Daniel.”
They sit for a moment without speaking.
“Joe,” Polly Cradle says at last, “we should go. We have to check in with Mercer.”
“One minute, I just need to make a call,” Joe says.
“Joe—”
“It’s important, Polly, I promise. It might help.”
She sighs a yes, and Joe gets permission from Cecily Foalbury to use the telephone. Cecily’s gaze sweeps over Polly, resting for a moment on the bag of records on its strap over one shoulder. She raises her eyebrows just a little, and Polly nods. The Man-eater smiles, and pats Polly lightly on the back of the hand.
“Partner in crime,” Cecily says happily. “The right sort of girl. At last!”
The phone is in a separate wooden booth, an elegantly carved enclosure with a special noise-reducing design. It was made, according to the handwritten label, for an Estonian noble in the late 1800s. Joe cannot remember the number, but he can remember dialling it on his father’s grey desk phone, the purr of the tone and the endless clickety-clack as he went through the digits. Back then, it was an oh-one number. Now it’s oh-two-oh-seven. He hopes the rest remains the same.
Someone answers on the second ring.
“Fucking intolerable cow!” cries an aggravated male voice.
“Don?”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. I thought you were Erika. My lover,” the voice clarifies, in case Joe knows more than one Erika who might be an intolerable cow. “Who’s that?”
“Don? It’s Joe Spork.”
“Joe? Joe Spork? Oh, for God’s sake, little Josh?”
“Yes.”
“Little Josh, who must now be almost as old as I am, you have the pleasure of addressing the Honourable Donald Beausabreur Lyon, master of a thousand bureaucrats and Prince of Quangos! That’s Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation, for those in the audience who don’t know, such as the intolerable cow who thinks she can boss me around like a puppy dog and make me go to bloody Sheffield when I don’t bloody want to… Honestly, it’s bloody Sheffield, not Saint-Tropez… How may I be of service?”
“I’ve got a spot of bother, Don, and I thought you might be able to help out. For old times’ sake, as it were.”
“Well, I don’t know. I might. What sort of bother?”
“I’m involved in this bee thing. By accident.”
“The bee thing?”
“The crazy bees from Cornwall? The police were called out.”
“Oh, bloody hell. That bee thing. That’s far beyond me, old lad. Go and see that weasel at the office and confess all, is my advice. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you’d prefer not to?” This last in a strangely wheedling tone.
“I’d really prefer not to.”
The Hon Don doesn’t speak. Joe realises he’s waiting for something. There’s a password, but I don’t know what it is.
Finally, “Well, I’ll look into it, Josh—Joe, is it?—but I can’t promise anything. Where are you?”
“I’ll call you, Don. It’s better that way.”
“What? Oh, yes, of course. I see what you mean. But you can trust me. Mum’s the word.”
“Oh! Yes. Don, did Mathew ever mention anything to you about his mother?”
“God, no. Harriet was the only person he ever talked to about that sort of thing. Go and see her, is my advice. Tell her I said to sing ‘Georgia Brown’ one more time for the Hon Don! All right? Then I’ll hear from you? Grand. Grand…”
And Donald Beausabreur Lyon is gone, in a flurry of false bonhomie.
Joe turns to find Cecily Foalbury watching him from the doorway. From the non-display collection in the basement her husband has retrieved a small portable gramophone known as a Piglet (Jacobs Bros. of Stroud, 1940) because of the noise it makes when you wind it. “We’re always here, Joe,” she says very seriously. “We’d go to the wall for you. Don’t ever forget it. That’s what Harticle’s is for, and it’s our trust. ‘No craftsman stands alone, nor in his darkness lacks for light, nor has no shield against his patron’s spite.’ Frightful piece of doggerel, but it’s real to me. And I love you like my own, all right?” She hugs him powerfully, then turns hurriedly away.
Subdued, Joe allows Polly to drive him back to her home. Mercer calls when they are still a few streets away with strict instructions that they remain in the house.
“I’m coming to you,” he tells her. “Something’s happening.”
“What sort of something?”
“Turn on the television when you get home,” Mercer says, “and then stay exactly where you are, which is what you’re supposed to be doing right now. Where did you go?”