had drunk his coffee, from the Spiderman mug he had found among the medley of crockery, before he opened up his laptop to check his e-mails. Mike had explained that the system called for an e-mail address and something called a ‘server’. He had set up [email protected] which allowed, he suggested, for expansion into a website. For some time Mike had been of the view that a website would make a valuable innovation for the Golightly Enterprises and was hoping to take advantage of this holiday to persuade the boss of its commercial advantages.
Connecting the laptop to the phone involved some fiddling about with the leads which Mike had had the foresight to include, so that by the time Mr Golightly was ready to dial up it was past ten o’clock. Plenty of time, though, to start work – the day was still young.
Several e-mails, accompanied by a sound effect, appeared on the screen. The first was a message from the server, cosmos. com, and offered Mr Golightly the benefit of bargain travel services, including a cheap offer to go diving in the Red Sea.
In his younger, more forceful, days Mr Golightly had often visited that part of the world. But the greener, less turbulent pastures of England, were, he felt, a more soothing environment for his recreational plans. The Red Sea would take him too far down memory lane, a route to be avoided when one was set upon change.
The second message was from Bill, his handsome PA, and concerned some charity, to do with Third World aid, to which Mr Golightly had agreed to lend the firm’s name.
The third was from no recognisable name or address.
by what way is the light parted?
was the disconcerting message.
Scientific questions had not troubled Mr Golightly greatly over the years. In the past, when questions had been asked at all, it was he who had tended to do the asking. His secretary, Martha, the one who had put him on to Neighbours, would probably say that this was ‘very like a man’. Comments along these lines from Martha had been more forthcoming lately. She had worked faithfully for the Golightly firm for many years but latterly she seemed to have picked up the modern woman’s tendency – an unfortunate one, Mr Golightly couldn’t help sometimes feeling – to criticise the male; or perhaps criticise him openly was more accurate, since Mr Golightly was too shrewd a judge of human nature to suppose that men had ever, in women’s private thoughts, got off scot-free.
What would Martha make of the enigmatic question which now confronted him? It seemed to contain a sly play on his name. And who on earth could have sent it? His usual movements, for the purpose of the smooth running of the firm, were shrouded in a certain mystery; he was unused to being confronted with barefaced questions, especially ones which touched obliquely on his own person.
Mr Golightly had set up his computer on the gateleg table with a view on to the garden and down to the field below. Looking out, he saw the horse standing in the sun, taking the benefit of its warmth on his chestnut coat. There was something reassuring about the horse’s stance. Not quite meaning to, Mr Golightly got up from the table and wandered outside.
Samson, observing activity, walked over to investigate. Mr Golightly felt regretful again over the sugar lumps. But no doubt the horse’s owner would anyway disapprove. It was discouraging how few of the world’s prodigal comforts were nowadays available for enjoyment. Mr Golightly had been cautioned by Martha against exceeding the recommended number of ‘units’ of alcohol he drank in a week. There had been times when her boss had supped of the vine in a manner which would throw a modern health practitioner into a frenzy, and yet, Mr Golightly couldn’t help feeling, he was not obviously any the worse for his past excesses.
Next door, Ellen Thomas was lying on her sofa. She looked out to where the rooks were dredging the fields clean of the new-sown wheat. A saying of her late husband’s drifted into her mind. ‘Forbear not sowing because of the birds,’ he had used to say, when counselling against needless caution. Her new neighbour, with his big head, reminded her a little of Robert. She might give him some of the duck eggs, azure, like the sky’s watery reflection in the puddle which had collected on the upturned barrel she had put outside for some purpose she couldn’t now remember.
What did ‘remember’ mean? Robert had told her this once, too. Wasn’t it putting back together the body’s members which had been torn asunder…?
IT WAS THURSDAY, AND CONSEQUENTLY THE YEW tree was not a safe hiding place for Johnny Spence. The Reverend Meredith Fisher was at home and would be back and forth, sticking her nose into other people’s business or attending to her parish duties, depending on your point of view. Johnny’s attitude was laissez-faire: he didn’t mind what the lady vicar did so long as she didn’t interfere with his use of the churchyard.
The concept of sanctuary is an old one and in using the environs of the Lord for this purpose Johnny followed a long and venerable tradition. But he was not the first to be ousted from safe-hiding by one of the Lord’s appointed. Who can say how far the Lord Himself, were He to be consulted, would sanction the attitudes of those who undertake to speak on His behalf? As it was, Johnny had to look for an alternative place of concealment.
Great Calne’s church, with its square Norman tower, stood flanked on one side by the rectory and on the other by the Post Office Stores. A little way down the hill, on the opposite side of the road, lay Spring Cottage where only the previous day Johnny had watched the arrival of Mr Golightly.
Johnny had practised being invisible since his mum took up with his stepdad. Like all early training, this stood him in sound stead. At school his absences were so regular as to be generally overlooked and often his name was omitted entirely from any official register. A conviction that one is nothing acts as a powerful charm against being perceived, but Johnny was experienced enough in the ways of the world to know that you mustn’t take anything for granted. Despite the fact that, to the authorities, he didn’t exist, that didn’t mean he should be careless. Like a young tomcat, he whipped down the street and inside the gateway of Spring Cottage. He felt cautiously well disposed towards the bloke he had spied on and he wanted, anyway, to get a closer look at the Traveller.
The sky had turned indigo and the sun set up at once a contesting sheet of light. A cloud of rooks, with the mysterious concordance of flocking birds, rose, hovered in the petrol-coloured sky, gathered together again, then, as suddenly, parted into factions to flutter like confetti from some Satanic wedding on to the fields, or settle in the stands of reddening beech. Splashes of sunlight on the birds’ plumage made fitful, darting gleams. And now the sky, as if surrendering to an eloquent seducer, cleared rapidly again, stretches of blue wash appeared and scraps of cloud, as picturesquely puffed as any on a painted Italian ceiling, began to scud wantonly across the renewing sky.
Mr Golightly, sitting before his laptop, watched this drama. It was amazing what could be accomplished if you simply left a system to run itself. This was the policy he tried to operate in his business. In the early days, he had held the reins more tightly, managing everything more or less single-handed. But that was before the catastrophe which had changed everything. These days, as the office knew, delegation was his watchword. And it was precisely this which made it possible for him to take this holiday and rewrite his great work into the soap opera, which he had decided to call – he was a little proud of the title – That’s How Life Is.
But, how, in God’s name, to begin?
For a start he needed the cast of characters. Until recently, he would have written these
