‘Honestly Trixie ...’
‘It was only a joke. I don’t know ...’ She stomped off without carrying as much as an eggspoon. ‘No sense of humour in this place.’
Now Ken struggled to his feet. He had ‘a leg’ which stopped him doing quite as much as he would have liked around the house and garden. Some days (especially if rain was forecast) it was worse than others. This morning he hardly limped at all. He picked up the breadboard, saying ‘No peace for the wicked.’
‘They wouldn’t know what to do with it if there was,’ said Janet, and Heather put on her patient Griselda face.
Janet was Heather’s cross and a great challenge. She was so left-brained; so intellectual. It had been difficult at first for Heather to cope. Until one day, appealed to, Ken’s spirit guide Hilarion had explained that Janet was the physical manifestation of Heather’s own animus. How grateful Heather had been to learn this! It not only made absolute sense but brought about an even deeper feeling of caring commitment. Now, using a tone of exaggerated calm she said: ‘I think we’d better get on.’
Left alone with Janet, Arno looked at her with some concern. He was afraid he intuited some sort of appeal in the whiteness of her face and the strained rigidity of her hands and arms as she hung on to the dustpan. He wished to do the right thing. Everyone at The Lodge was supposed to be available for counselling at any time of the day or night and Arno, although he was by nature rather fastidious about the spilling of his own emotions, always tried to be open and receptive if needed by others. However there were resonances here which disturbed him deeply and that he did not understand. Nevertheless ...
‘Is there something worrying you, Janet? That you would like to share?’
‘What do you mean?’ She was immediately on the defensive, as if goaded. ‘There’s nothing. Nothing at all.’ She was irritated by the word ‘share’, implying as it did an automatic willingness to receive.
‘I’m sorry.’ Arno backtracked, unoffended. His freckled countenance glazed over with relief.
‘Unless you go around with a permanent grin on your face, people keep asking you what your problem is.’
‘It’s well meant -’
But Janet was leaving, her angular shoulder blades stiff with irritation. Arno followed more slowly, making his way to the great hall. It appeared empty. He looked around. ‘Tim ...?’ He waited then called again but no one came. The boy had lately found himself a quite impregnable retreat and Arno, appreciating Tim’s need to be safe and lie securely hidden, made no attempt to seek him out. When the Master emerged from his devotions, Tim also would show himself - following in his beloved benefactor’s footsteps as naturally as any shadow. And crouching at his feet when he halted like a faithful hound.
So Arno put the beehive hood aside for another day. Then he made his way down the long passage to where the Wellingtons, galoshes and umbrellas were kept, found his old jacket and panama hat, and disappeared to work in the garden.
After everyone had gone and the main house was quiet Tim appeared, edging his way into the hall.
Here, in the centre of the ceiling, was a magnificent, octagonal stained-glass lantern thrusting skywards forming part of the roof. On bright days brilliant beams of multicoloured light streamed through the glass, spreading over the wooden floor a wash of deep rose and amber, rich mulberry, indigo and soft willow green. As the clouds now obscured and now revealed the sun, so the colours would glow more or less intensely, giving the illusion of shifting, flowing life. This area of quite magical luminosity had a compelling fascination for Tim. He would stand in it, slowly turning and smiling with pleasure at the play of kaleidoscopic patterns on his skin and clothes as he bathed in the glow. Now he was poised beneath a powdery haze of dust motes suspended in the radiance. He saw them as a cloud of tiny insects: glittery-winged harmless little things.
Sometimes he dreamed about the lantern. In these dreams he was always in motion, occasionally swimming upwards, parting the spreading shiny light with webbed fingers, pressing it behind him, kicking out. But more often, he would be flying. Then, weightless in a weightless world, his body would soar and spin and dive, looping the rainbow loop. Once he had been accompanied by a flock of bright birds with kind eyes and soft unthreatening beaks. Waking after a lantern dream he would sometimes be filled with a terrible sense of fear and loss. He would spring out of bed then and race on to the landing to check that it was still there.
When Tim had first been brought to the Manor House and it had been impossible to persuade him to take any food, the Master, seeing the transforming effect of the dancing colours, had had two cushions brought and placed on the hall floor. Then, sitting with the boy, he had coaxed him to eat as one does a child - a spoonful at a time on the ‘one for me and one for you’ principle. He had kept this up for nearly two weeks. Tim was better now of course. He sat at the table with everyone else and played his part in the community as well as he was able, struggling with his allotted simple tasks.
But he never stopped being frightened. And now, when a door on the landing opened, even though it was only Trixie going to the bathroom, Tim ran like the wind to the nearest fox-hole and once more hid himself away.
In the Solar the Master sat, a tisane of fresh mint-and-lemon balm in his hand. Suhami, who had asked to see him urgently, seemed in no hurry to speak now that she was here. Being in the Master’s presence frequently affected people so. Whatever disturbance of mind or body drove them to seek his counsel, they would find hardly had they come before him than the matter did not seem so urgent after all.
And in any case thought Suhami as she rested upon her cushion, spine supple and elegantly straight, it was now too late for words. The damage had been done. She looked at her teacher. At his delicate hands, enrapt features and thin shoulders. It was impossible to be angry with him; foolish to expect him to understand. He was so guileless, his concerns purely of a spiritual nature. He was in love (Janet had once said) with the ideal of purity and so saw goodness everywhere. Suhami pictured her father, soon to be on his dreadful juggernauting way, and her distress returned, keen as before.
Guy Gamelin was about as spiritual as a charging rhino and had been known to leave an equivalent amount of chaos in his wake. The Master could not possibly imagine a person so volatile; so alarming when thwarted; so consumed by massive gobbling greed. For he thought there was that of God in everyone and all you had to do to reach it was to be patient and love them.
‘I would not have suggested this visit,’ (she was quite used to the Master reading her mind), ‘if I didn’t think the time was right.’ When Suhami remained silent, he continued: ‘It is time to heal, child. Let all this bitterness go. It will only do you harm.’
‘I do try.’ She said, as she had a dozen times over the past week, ‘I just don’t see why he has to come here. I shan’t change my mind about the money if that’s what’s behind it.’
‘Oh, let’s not start on that again.’ He smiled. ‘I know an impasse when I see one.’
‘If you won’t take it, it will go to charity.’ She added quickly, ‘You don’t know what it does to people, Master. They look at you, think of you differently. Already -’ Her face changed, becoming apprehensive. Soft and blurred. Her mouth trembled.
‘Already?’
‘You ... haven’t told anyone? About the trust fund?’
‘Of course not, since that was your wish. But don’t you think your parents -’
‘My mother isn’t coming. He wrote saying she was ill.’
‘That may well be true.’