I think that was when I first learned the glorious cost-free feeling of righteousness that comes with defending other people's reputations.
At the end of the corridor on the uppermost landing was a tiny set of steps curling up to an attic door. The attic was supposed to be available to us as storage space when we had to clear our rooms between terms so that the college could rent the premises for conferences. But the attic was permanently locked and to get access you had to go and see the head porter, a doleful, pipe-smoking, pint-sized sack of misery with a cubbyhole office reeking of tobacco and nastiness, and guarded by a vicious one-eyed Alsatian. The porter's office was half a mile away. Never disposed to loan out the key, he insisted on a scheduled appointment during which he would with great ceremony drag out his huge bunch of keys and exercise his dog all the way from his office to the attic. Everyone spared themselves this theatricality by just not bothering, which was of course the porter's intention. Instead the drying room and the laundry room served for any essential storage.
This time Fellowes had the keys to the attic. The door was a bit stiff: he had to put his shoulder to it. When the door opened, it released a kind of sigh. Fellowes stepped in, pirouetting neatly to hold open the door for me. When I was inside he gently closed it behind me. I don't know why but I would have preferred the door open.
He crossed the gnarled old varnished floorboards and with his hands on his hips stood looking down at the markings on the floor. A pool of December sunlight was beamed onto the floor by a porthole-type glass window at the far end of the attic room, making the markings look fainter than they actually were. It was a good few seconds before he asked me, "Do you know what it is?"
"Of course. It's a pentagram."
"Pentacle," he corrected.
"What's the difference?"
He answered just as if I were enjoying the benefit of one of his college tutorials. "The circle around the five-pointed star is what makes it a pentacle," and here he looked up at me, "and not a pentagram."
"Devil worship," I said.
"Is it?"
I must have coloured. "Well. That's what it looks like."
Inside the chalked circle was a five-pointed star, and surrounding the whole thing was a larger, concentric circle. At each of the five points was a candle stub and a small ceramic bowl containing maybe salt in one, some spice in another. Various symbols—possibly Hebrew—were chalked there, and between the concentric circles was a long Latin inscription.
"Someone seems to know their stuff," he said. "Or they are just pretending to."
"What does this Latin thing mean?"
"It's not important," he said. "Plus I'd rather not say it aloud. So, you didn't put it here?"
"Heck!"
"Is that a no?"
"Yes, it's a no."
I stooped to rub at the chalk on the floorboards. It wasn't the usual kind of stuff that dusts away easily.
"Chalk on the floor is just chalk on the floor," Fellowes said. "I'm a bit more disturbed by this fellow."
He turned to the wall. There was a goat's head: a real goat's head, with a very impressive set of horns. It had been pushed onto a nail at about eye-level. Some objects had been removed from around the goat's head but I didn't say anything. I didn't want to incriminate myself. Fellowes was watching me closely.
"You're a lad about campus," he said. "You get around. You see what comes and goes. Any ideas?"
"What, about who might have done it?"
He folded his arms, nodded. I looked down at the
pentacle
on the floor and shook my head slowly.
"None at all? You see, when the same question was put to other students they all had one or two ideas. Your name cropped up more than once."
"Well, we all have our enemies," I said.
"We do, Mister Heaney, we do."
"All right, it's a long shot, and I've got no real evidence to back it up," I said, "but if it's just ideas you're after, I can think of a couple of names."
"Let's close this place up again," said Fellowes. "You can tell me downstairs."
I skimmed the book-launch invitation card across my desk and got on with my work. I had a number of papers to read from various committees and I had a report to prepare. The demon of acronyms was busy that morning: the DEFS were encouraging all INGYOS to prepare a response to the YOPA statement on EEC grants for voluntary CRY groups.
It wasn't easy to switch off. I was seriously worried about Stinx, and whether he was going to come through on the book. It was true that he'd never let us down on a project, though it always came in his own time. And time was what Antonia and her colleagues didn't have. If they defaulted, the bailiffs would be sent in with indecent haste and the GoPoint project would be all over.
I left off my report writing and went online to have a look at what was in my own private bank account. Not much at all, but I did at least have the money I'd saved from Robbie's Glastonhall fees. I wondered what the betting odds would be for a) Stinx coming through with the forgeries; b) my making a good sale; and c) this all happening before the GoPoint premises got turned into designer shag-pads for young stockbrokers.
I made an online enquiry about a loan.
All these concerns, not to mention the arrival of a book-launch invitation triggering memories of gravely misspent youth, made it difficult for me to concentrate on my work. Then, just as I was patently not about to commence the writing of my report, an email popped into my inbox. It was from an address I didn't recognize, with the header "Good To Meet You." I almost deleted it. It was the kind of header you expect from a Nigerian phisher who—quite reasonably—wants to share several million dollars with you in return for the use of your bank account for two minutes.
But I opened it, and found it to be from Yasmin. It took me a blink or two to remember who she was—so indelibly inscribed as Anna was she in my own head. She'd enjoyed meeting me that lunchtime in the Museum Tavern. She would have liked to have chatted for longer. She was sorry not to be able to spend a few more minutes together as she made her way back to work that afternoon. If I wanted to meet up one lunchtime on another occasion, she thought that might be fun.
My cheeks flamed.
Perhaps it was the thought of fun that made my face burn. What was all this gibberish about fun? Fun wasn't really something I went in for. Fun and I had parted company on the high road of life at about the time my hair started to thin and my knee joints lost all compression, quick handshake, no fuss, farewell.
Fun.
I'm not sure if I breathed the world out loud. I'm sure I did no such thing, and neither did I make any movement, but from across the room of that high-ceilinged old office with its moulded plaster tongue-and-dart cornices, Val looked up at me from her own work. How can that be?
"All right?" she asked, smiling pleasantly.
"Fine, Val, fine."
She put her nose back in her work. I pretended to re-engage with mine. Something was seriously wrong with that email. I read it again. It made no sense at all. Why would a hip, appealing and exciting young woman want to offer herself to a mothballed old stiff like me? I was no less suspicious than I would have been of the Nigerian phishing scam.
I deleted the email, put aside all thoughts of Yasmin, forgot about Stinx's nose and dismissed Charles Fraser's book-launch party. Instead I directed the full onslaught of my passions into the YOPA report to all INGYOS.
It was dark by the time I got home that evening and I was surprised to find that I had left a light on. The tall standard lamp in my living room was burning softly. This bothered me. I don't leave lamps on. I wondered if Fay had been there. Or one of the children. For some reason I made sure Fay had a key to my house and now I hate the fact that I gave her a key. Some people do not know when a relationship has ended, and I'm one of them.
Nothing was otherwise disturbed and there was no indication that anyone had been there. I thought that I must have left the lamp switched on when I left that morning. I'd had a lot on my mind what with the upset with Stinx and his lack of progress on the book, and the threat to Antonia's project. I slipped off my coat, drew the curtains and went straight for a beaker of the rubicund relief & rescue.
I put on some music. I often feel as though a man my age sipping his wine alone in a dimly lit room should play Bach cello concertos, but it tends to be The Stranglers or The Jam. The Buzzcocks. I'm not actually going to get up and pogo round the room but it does stop me feeling quite so alone.
The telephone went. It was my son, Robbie.
"Hold on," I told him. "I'll turn this down."
"Lucien says—"
I interrupted him. "How are you?"
"I'm fine. Lucien says—"
"No, after you say,
I'm fine,
you say,
How are you, Dad?
It's a fussy little ritual, I know, but it's an important one."
There was a pause. "Lucien says—"
"Okay, so you don't want to observe the ritual. What does Lucien say?"
"He says he'll pay for my tennis and my fencing if you'll pay for Glastonhall."
"So if I go the starter, the main course and the dessert, he'll stretch to the after-dinner mint?"
"What?"
"Here's a little life-lesson, Robbie. When asking people for money, observe the pleasantries, respect the rituals and always, always clench the buttocks."
"What?"
I hung up on him. Sometimes it's great being a bastard. Then I turned up the Buzzcocks. Loud.
Five minutes later the phone went again. This time it was Fay, wanting to know what happened.
"He's raging," she said. "He's slammed his bedroom door so hard one of the hinges has come off."
"Find a screwdriver. Take off the other hinges. Tell him he can only have his door back when he's learned how to use it properly."
"Be serious. He wants to talk about Glastonhall."
"What's that? Can barely hear with this dammed music so loud."
"Then turn it down!"
"I can't, I've got people here. You know what these young folk are like."
"What young folk?"
"Sorry, can't hear. Tell him to call me when he's stopped sulking. Bye!"
I poured myself another glass of red-robed oblivion and switched on my home PC in an angry mood. Do I hate my boy? Of course not. I just want to comb the fireball nits out of his hair and get him to remember that I spent the most important years of his life gently training him not to be a shit.
Anger makes you drink faster. Sometimes when you're furious the drink doesn't touch the sides. Or even the shadow of the sides. If you're really incensed, drinking is just like driving a petrol tanker one hundred miles per hour into a fiery pit.
I had email. I deleted the spam with rapid keystrokes and stopped at one called "Second Attempt." It was from her again. Anna. Yasmin. Whatever.
She apologised if she was repeating her last message. Her email account had been playing up, she said, and some of her emails had strayed. She asked about GoPoint and Antonia. She made no mention of Ellis. She was, she said, "available for coffee or a glass of wine" at any time.
Available for coffee or wine?
Here we go again
, I thought. Whatever for? What on Earth could she want? I doubted she was after antiquarian books. Perhaps she was looking for a job or a reference or contacts or something. It was all a bit baffling. Then I wondered if Ellis had put her up to it. The pesky poet didn't trust me an inch over the bidding for
Pride and Prejudice
and he was right not to: his over-developed proboscis was just sniffing out the wrong rat. I guessed that was it. Maybe he thought she could sound me out over a jeroboam of wine, lead me into an indiscretion or two.
The very idea! I think my heart has become a wineskin over the years. Authentic, tanned goat-hide, triple-stitched, proofed with pitch, fashioned for an airtight nozzle. Nothing gets in or out. No matter how much I have to drink I don't spill, unless I want to. I hit the delete button: get ye hence, saucy maid.
But then the screen prompt asked me: Are you sure you want to delete. And I thought:
Am I sure?
I got up and lowered the volume on the sound system. And I composed a reply: light, jocular but maintaining a suitable distance. And just as I hit send I heard a knocking on the door.
It was Stinx. "Bloody Nora! I've been 'ammering away on this door for fifteen minutes. I went for a walk round the block, came back and banged again. I could hear the music but I couldn't bloody raise you!"
He had a huge artist's portfolio under his arm. He marched into the kitchen, unzipped it and began to lay out his work on the table.
"Is it finished?" I asked hopefully.
He beamed me a smile triumphant and radiant. "Almost."
He'd come to report progress, not completion. My heart sank. Well, not quite sank, but took on water, gurgled, listed to one side, tried to recover steam. I hid my disappointment and poured him a glass of vino while he shucked off his coat and laid out the samples.
"You should see the vellum I'm making for it, too," he said proudly. "Best yet."
I'd rather he'd got on with the forgery than its wrappings, however magnificent the latter. "Excellent."
"Well, it's something I can do while I'm waiting for fixing and processes and all that."
I hadn't a clue what he was referring to. I picked up one of the paper samples he'd laid out on the table. It was mottled and fluffed and it seemed to smell exactly right. There were also the boards in green half morocco and with gilt spines, ready to be roughed up. I had no objection to what was actually there, which all looked very good. Masterful even, but it was nowhere near complete. What's more, we needed two copies. Clearly there was a long way to go. I laid down the samples. "Congratulations, Stinx, you've done it again."
His way of accepting my compliment was to blink at me.
"How do you get the wonderful smell?"