She definitely knew him. In the mould of the traditional Hollywood star - literally tall, dark and handsome - you’d think he would be hard to forget. And the voice... that was like an actor’s too.
Had she seen him around Hampstead? In Tesco’s or something?
‘Could I ask you a few questions? I’m Sarah Jane Smith -
from
Metropolitan.
The magazine, you know? We’re doing a feature on -’
His smile abruptly vanished. ‘A journalist... Ah yes, I remember you now.
Metropolitan.
And can I expect you to do as efficient a hatchet job on me now as you did last time?’
Eh? Oh Lor’! Of course. He looked so different with his long hair and his white robes.
‘We only reported what the committee said.’
Alex Whitbread. Shortened his name from Alexander to woo the masses. Alex Whitbread, the charmer - until you got on the wrong side of him. The farthest right member of a right-wing government, thrown out for blatant corruption - and more than a touch of racism. Better be careful, though. He was as sharp as he was good-looking. Tipped for prime minister in his early days.
This was a story in itself! If she could grab a photo...
Her hand was creeping towards her shoulder bag. After the foul-up at Space World, she never went anywhere without a 35mm camera and a Polaroid back-up.
‘Why should I submit myself to the smears of the gutter press?’ he asked.
Gutter press! Clorinda would love that. As editor of the glossiest of the glossies...
‘Look, Mr Whitbread -’
‘Brother Alex, if you don’t mind.’
‘Okay. Brother Alex. It’s obvious that you’ve moved away from your old life. And anyway, we want to write about your... your movement. Not you personally.’
He relaxed slightly. ‘Mm. Nonetheless, you infiltrated this meeting by pretending to be a new disciple. That’s hardly likely to inspire my trust.’
‘But that’s just it. Why the secrecy? Why can’t anybody just walk in and join up? And what’s it all about?’
‘The criteria for becoming a disciple - even a guest - are extremely strict. Mother Hilda insists that...’
‘Mother Hilda?’
For a moment, Whitbread looked as if he’d let out too much. ‘Ah yes... Mother Hilda. Mother Hilda is the founder of our order. It was through the revelation vouchsafed to Mother Hilda that the divine message of the great Skang was given to the world. Skang - may his name be blessed - Skang deserves, nay
demands,
only the most perfect representatives of the human race as his initiates. All the vitality of supreme bodily fitness; superlative intelligence...’
Superlative intelligence! Jeremy?
‘...and a dedication and a devotion which will merit the ultimate reward.’
‘And what’s that?’ Sarah asked.
‘The reward of Skang’s incomparable love.’
Incomparable codswallop, more like. ‘I thought they were asking rather a lot of questions when I applied. I’m flattered that they let me in.’
‘I gather that you didn’t partake of the... the communal cup?’
Couldn’t bring himself to say communion, could he!
‘No,’ said Sarah. ‘I just wasn’t thirsty.’
‘Once you’ve experienced the at-one-ment of the family of Skang, you’ll understand - and be eager to learn the esoteric truths of our teaching.’
‘I believe you,’ said Sarah, drily. ‘So where does this Mother Hilda hang out?’
Again the hesitation.
‘In Bombay,’ said Whitbread. It’s no secret. The ashram was the first Skang centre in the entire world.’
‘You mean... you mean there are places like this in other countries? How many? How many kids have got caught up in this?’
Whoops. Not the most tactful way of putting it! She’d blown it.
‘I’ve said enough,’ snapped Whitbread, turning away. ‘Print what you like.’
She pulled out the small camera. ‘Oh, Mr Whitbread...
Brother Alex!’
He turned back. ‘What?’
Got him!
His reaction was extraordinary. With the speed of a cobra’s strike, he lunged towards her and whipped the camera from her hand; and all in one movement he took out the film, pulling it from the cassette, letting it fell into useless curls.
Dropping the open camera at her feet without a word, he turned back to the door, taking a key from his pocket.
The bastard! He wasn’t going to get away with that!
‘One last question, Mr Whitbread. What’s through that door? Why do you keep it locked?’
But his only answer was a resounding slam.
It was Jeremy’s mother and, indirectly, his Uncle Teddy (who just happened to own about thirty per cent of the company that published
Metropolitan
), who had been the prime cause of Sarah’s incursion into the further reaches of the New Age.
‘Here,’ Clorinda had said, tossing a letter with an impeccably engraved letterhead towards Sarah. ‘You’d better look into this. I’ve just been glad to see the back of the little creep.’
Jeremy hadn’t come into work for something like three weeks. Since his absence had little or no effect on the output of the editorial department, it was hardly noticed, apart from giving rise to the occasional brief sigh of relief.
When, however, Sarah reluctantly went to see his Mama’
(as he always called her), it appeared that she looked on the matter somewhat differently.
‘The poor boy is so trusting,’ she’d said to Sarah, dabbing at her eyes with a scrap of a handkerchief. ‘I’m just afraid that somebody’s got wind of his trust fund. And he’s generous to a fault, as I’m sure you know.’
Generous? The last time he bought a round, there were riots in Fetter Lane. Well, not quite, but Sarah wouldn’t have been surprised.
‘Trust fund?’ she asked.
‘A legacy. Granny Fitzoliver left him a few shares. And when he turned eighteen...’ She’d dabbed at her eyes again and taken a sip from the half-filled tumbler in her other hand. The aroma of Chanel No. 5 had mingled with a whiff of neat gin.
‘He moved out, you see. Slumming it in Knightsbridge...’
Compared with Eaton Square, y-e-e-ss, I suppose you could say that, Sarah had thought.
‘... and the last time I saw him was about three weeks ago.
Popped in to get his cricket togs, he said. Cricket? He hated cricket at school!’
‘Paid three months’ rent in advance and took off after a week,’ said the caretaker of the block of flats in Knightsbridge where Jeremy had been living. ‘Here, I’ve got a forwarding address somewhere... Not that he’s had any post...’
And it had transpired that he’d gone even further down market than Knightsbridge (or so Mama would have thought)
- to Hampstead. Number 115 South Hill Park Square, NW3: a stone’s throw from the Heath and, for that matter, from Sarah’s own little attic bedsitter (dignified by the name of
‘studio flat’ because it had a bath in a box next to the kitchen sink). And when Sarah had put the new address under surveillance, having had no joy with a direct approach at the front door, sure enough there he was, resplendent in his cricket flannels, having slipped out to buy some fags.
‘You won’t have to wear white as a guest,’ he’d said (as if she was worried!), after he’d told her the glad news of his own acceptance into the bosom of the great Skang. ‘It’s all a gas.
Chanting and stuff... and... and things. You’ll love it, Sarah, honest. And you’re only just in time!’
‘Just in time? For what?’
Jeremy’s happy expression had disappeared. For a moment, he’d looked like a naughty little boy - a guilty little boy. ‘Oh... er...’ His face had cleared. ‘In time for today’s celebration, of course. What did you think I meant?’
Jeremy had always been easy to read. So what had all that been about? Sarah had filed his obvious slip away in the ‘To Be Dealt With Later’ section of her brain and followed him into the house.
* * *
the commune... whatever... being on the second floor of the lofty terrace of houses that made up the north side of South Hill Park Square, was that there was a ledge, at least eighteen inches wide, between the little balconies outside the front windows. And until Sarah had got halfway to the window of the room with the locked door, she’d thought it would be a good idea to edge along it.
Then she looked down.
And froze.
It was at that moment that it started to rain. And the low rumble of distant thunder promised a downpour. For a moment her nerve failed her and she was on the point of turning back. But whether it was her professional pride, or just the plain stubbornness of a true Liverpudlian, her curiosity had to be satisfied. She had to know what the locked door was hiding.
Inch by inch, her fingertips clutching vainly at the smooth wet stone behind her, she made her way to the ornamental railing of the next balcony, and, after a few convulsive breaths, managed to loosen her grip and climb over.
But the curtains were drawn. Utter frustration...
Hang on! There was a crack between the curtains, and if she pushed her face really close to the glass she could just see enough to be able to scan the room from the double door on one side to the other door in the far wall. It was an ordinary room, with chairs and a big table. And there in the middle: the Skang!
It was a shimmering bronze statue (an idol?) the height of a man and roughly of the same dimensions throughout, save for the head, which was at least twice as big, with great eyes.
It patently represented the same being as the one in the painting. It was sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding a large bowl in which the tip of its proboscis was resting.
As detailed as a rococo carving, the thing seemed to be a cross between a reptile and a giant insect. But in spite of its grotesque features, there was something about it that Sarah found strangely beautiful.
She pulled the Polaroid camera from her bag and, blinking the raindrops from her eyes, took as good a shot of it as she could manage. She’d just have to hope that the automatic flash would take care of the lack of light.
She’d got what she wanted. This was going to be quite a story.
But as she stuffed the camera back into her bag, ready for the terrifying journey back along the ledge, she heard a sound - and the curtains were flung back. She threw herself flat against the wall as the world was bleached by the first lightning flash of the coming storm.
Whitbread! He must have still been in the room, and seen the flash!
Not daring to move, Sarah held her breath, waiting for the window to open and the humiliating confrontation. But the thunder broke the heavens apart, the rain sheeted down, the lightning danced around the rooftops of South Hill Park Square - and the curtains were closed again.
She’d got away with it.
‘No,’ said Clorinda.
‘But I’ve checked, and if I go by Garuda - that’s the Indonesian airline - it’ll only cost me... er,
you...
two hundred and fifty pounds return, and I -’
‘No,’ said Clorinda.
‘But if I join this Mother Hilda’s ashram -’
‘No,’ said Clorinda. She peered into a small mirror from her handbag. ‘India’s swarming with kids dressed up in white or orange or sky-blue-pink, thinking they’re going to save the world. One, the world probably isn’t worth saving, and two, they’re not going to do it with my money.’
She sucked at her front teeth, but whether this was an expression of her contempt for Sarah’s project, or an attempt to remove a smear of lipstick, Sarah was uncertain.
‘And while we’re on the subject of what I’m paying for, where’s your think-piece on fish? It had better be good. I’ve waited long enough for it.’
‘Yes, well... It’s nearly finished. I’ve had to do a lot of research... Honestly, Clorinda love, this Skang thing could be really big! And it all started in India, so -’
‘Why are you so fired-up about it, anyway? They’re doing us a favour, aren’t they, getting Jeremy off our back?’
There Sarah had to agree. But still... This needed to be approached from a different direction. She took a deep breath and launched into Clorinda-speak. ‘Tell you what, we could plan a whole campaign!
“Is the New Age old hat?!” “All you
need is love? We say no!” “Will meditation give you a fat
bum?”
That sort of thing. And I could go out to Bombay and -’
‘No,’ said Clorinda.
Why
was
she so fired-up?
The whole Skang set-up was on a par with most of the other new cults that had been springing up over the past few years. Why did she feel there was something there that was fundamentally wrong - evil, almost?
It was then that she thought of the Doctor.
This was right up his street, surely? A strange alien-looking creature; kids being brainwashed by a shady politician... If anybody was on the side of the good guys... And, after all, in spite of his being attached to the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, he was his own man. (Would you call a Time Lord a man?) Surely she could get in to see him after all that they’d been through together?
But there was something she had to do first...
‘I went back, you see Doctor, and applied all over again. But I thought that Whitbread might have banned me, so I went as somebody else...’ She giggled at the memory.