Rye looked at the board. She had just laid, not without some complacency, azalea. Now Dee crossed it at the l with genitalia, then carefully removed the rest of her tiles.
“I did mention the rhyming rule, didn’t I?” he said. “Cross one of your opponent’s words with a rhyming word and you score both words and also win the right to remove your opponent’s tiles for your own use, if so desired.”
“But that means you could put my azalea back down on your next go,” she said with pretended indignation.
“Just so. It might be wise therefore to seek a way to block my genitalia.”
“Oh, I shall, never fear. If I’d known you invited me here to deflower me, I would never have come.”
In fact she almost hadn’t.
After Percy Follows’ funeral, when Dick Dee had told her he was going to clear out Stangcreek Cottage, she’d said, “You’re giving it up? Trouble with the new lord?”
“As they’re having difficulty establishing who it might be, no, not yet. Just trouble with my relationship with the place. I’ve only been back once since it happened and I got straight back in the car and returned to town. I no longer feel at ease there.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You seemed so much at home. Have you got a lot of stuff?”
“Enough. Even camping out, it tends to accumulate.” A pause, then, “Look, you wouldn’t care to come along and give me a hand? Two hands, in fact, and an extra car, would be very useful.”
She would have said no straight off if he hadn’t gone on in a rush, “And to tell the truth, I’m not very keen on going back there by myself.”
Now she hesitated, but still with the odds on refusal, till suddenly he said, “Oh hell! Rye, of course, you’ve got even more reason than I have for being reluctant to go out there again. My fears are all associative. You actually found the poor devil. It was crass of me to ask you. I’m sorry.”
Which worked better than any persuasion.
“And it’s craven of me to hesitate,” she said. “Of course I’ll come.”
He looked at her doubtfully.
“You’re sure? Please don’t feel you’ve got to.”
“Because you’re my boss?” She laughed. “I don’t believe I’ve ever done anything I didn’t want just because you were my boss.”
“I’m glad to hear it. What I meant was, because you’re my friend.”
She thought about this then smiled and said, “Yes, I am. And yes, I shall come. But first I’ll have to go home and get out of these sad rags. It’s the only outfit I’ve got fit to wear at funerals, and they seem to be the big social occasion this season.”
“That’s OK. I want to change too. Do we need to make our apologies for skipping the meats?”
“Who to? I think we just go, and them as miss us will miss us, and them as don’t, won’t.”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself.”
And now, an hour later, here they were at the cottage and so far Rye had felt none of the feared oppression, nor so far as she could see, had her companion.
They hadn’t made much progress with the packing up. It had felt damp and chill in the cottage and Dee had riddled the ashes in the grate, lit a whole packet of firelights and tossed on a couple of logs.
“I chopped ’em,” he said. “We might as well benefit from them.”
“Good idea.” She warmed her hands at the rapidly blazing fire and drew in the smell of the burning wood.
“I love that smell,” she said.
“Me too. Ash, I think. The best. Ashes to ashes makes more sense if you view it as a process rather than rubbish disposal. To burn and die, giving off warmth and sweet odour, is not a bad image of life, don’t you agree?”
“Does that still include sure and certain hope of resurrection?” asked Rye, smiling.
“You’re asking whether I’m comfortable with the notion that poor Percy might return to us?” he said, returning her smile.
“We shall be changed, remember?”
“In that case …But enough of metalinguistics. To work. I’ve got plenty of bin liners and some cardboard boxes. Just shove the stuff in. Nothing to worry about, except the paintings, and they’re not exactly Old Masters.”
“The young master’s maybe?” said Rye.
“Thank ’ee kindly, miss,” he said.
They’d started the packing but had been at it only a few minutes when Rye had happened on the game board. Even folded it was an object of exquisite design, with ornate brass hinges gleaming gold against polished rosewood.
“May I open it?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Oh, but it’s lovely,” she exclaimed as she saw the intricate zodiacal designs winding their way among the letter squares. “I’ve seen the one you and Charley play on in the office, but this is even more ornate.”
“Yes, they’re all different,” he said. “But this I regard as the masterboard. The star signs on it mean that certain words can gain added value if they’re entered in certain significant locations. For instance-I’m sure I know it, but it is best always to be sure with a lady-remind me of your date of birth.”
“The first of May 1976.”
“May the first, seventy-six. Mayday, Mayday. Yes, now I recall. That’s Taurus, of course. So if you had the tiles to lay your own name in your own star-sign, then you would gain extra points. If first, however, you were able to place significant planets in the sign according to their conjunction on the date, and better still, at the time of your birth, then your point score would be, if you will excuse the trope, astronomical. But forgive me. I am intoxicated with the distillations of my own fermented fancy. Nothing more boring than the ramblings of a drunk!”
“Not boring,” she assured him. “But maybe a touch baffling. I’ve looked at that copy of the rules you gave me, but to be honest they just left me more confused than when I started.”
“Always the case,” he said. “The best games are like the best lives-you only learn by living them. But let me try to elucidate …”
It was a simple progression from elucidation via demonstration to play.
When he set up the third tile rack with the letters spelling Johnny on it, she looked a question at him.
“A young schoolfriend who died,” he said.
“The boy in the photo?”
“That’s him. Little Johnny Oakeshott. He had the sweetest nature of any creature I ever knew. Charley Penn and I were a good working team but Johnny somehow made us complete. Before, we were a very effective combination of intellect and imagination. To which Johnny added a human soul. Does that sound mawkish?”
“No,” she said. “No, it doesn’t.”
He smiled at her and said, “I always thought you would understand. We played the game three-handed in those days. Johnny was never any good at it, but he loved to feel he was taking part.”
“Then he died?”
“Yes,” he said sombrely. “Stolen by some envious god. Since then we’ve always kept a rack for him. And there’s a rule which never got written down which permits a player to use the letters in Johnny’s rack if by adding them to his own letters he can form a whole word in any language.”
“Then what? He wins outright?”
Dee shrugged and said, “Who knows? It hasn’t happened yet. I sometimes fantasize that if it did, we would find Johnny sitting there in his place, ready to play. A real spell, in every sense, you see. But this is morbid. Let me initiate you into my mystery.”
And so the game began. Dee clearly enjoyed the role of patient teacher, though it did seem to Rye that every time she thought she was getting the hang of it, he introduced a new and still more complex element. Not that she felt this as competitive. Indeed she soon began to get a sense that the mature experience of the game would have more of the partnership of dancing in it than the clash of competition. The rich designs glowed on the board and the letter tiles, made of smooth ivory, slipped through the fingers like silken fish when you dipped your hand into their container to replenish your store. This container itself was a thing of beauty, no plain tin or battered cardboard box, but a heavy gold-hinged casket carved from rubeous crystal.