‘Consider’ – now there was a word the phantom e-mailer might also understand…con sidere – with the stars. Was that how the e-mails travelled, through the upper reaches of the ether? He pictured himself, wearing a pair of silver shoes, strolling soundlessly through the quiet chilly regions of the far-flung universes…
At this moment a loud banging at the back door and a raised voice penetrated his musing.
‘Hell-oah! Anybody at home?’
‘Someone, I know, who’s in the know, said there was some kind of handkerchief-pankerchief with the judges.’
Sam Noble had been at Spring Cottage for nearly an hour. Mr Golightly had, slightly maliciously, directed his visitor to the orange sofa, but a challenge to the spine is no deterrent to the determinedly garrulous. Sam had accepted, and drunk, two coffees from the Spiderman mug, and was well launched into the history of What’s a Nice Girl?, his film about female jockeys.
‘Everyone said it was in the bag.’ A piece of luck for this Golightly chap, Sam thought, that he was able to put him in the frame about the movie business.
Mr Golightly, who, by and large, believed in the virtues of politeness, was suffering in silence. Protected as he had been by his faithful staff, he was rarely exposed to unwanted company and lacked the social know-how to rid himself of an unwelcome guest.
‘Of course, it was a set-up,’ Sam reaffirmed. ‘Everyone knew the Palme should have gone to Nice Girl.’
‘Yes?’ asked Mr Golightly.
‘No question.’
There was a pause during which Mr Golightly said nothing. He had had no idea how mind-numbing self-absorption could be.
‘So, what are you up to then?’ asked Sam, mustering some faint recollection that social engagement was supposed to entail dialogue.
‘Up to?’ The question had an intrusive flavour; it reminded Mr Golightly of the anonymous e-mailer’s challenges.
‘Yes, what are you writing, then? Novel, is it?’ Sam gambled. It was usually a novel that chaps like this were engaged in when they came to out-of-the-way parts like Great Calne. They all thought they’d got one in them!
‘Not exactly,’ said Mr Golightly, stiffly.
‘If it was a script, then if there was any way I could –’
‘Not a script,’ said Mr Golightly. ‘Thank you,’ he added. He did not cross his fingers behind his back because he regarded such superstitions as childish. But he felt indignant that he had been driven to fib.
‘– because if it was a script then I’m your man.’
Mr Golightly had observed over the years that there are occasions when a truth cannot be told. On the whole, his policy had been tell the truth and shame the Devil, but there were also occasions when a truth can act as a lie.
‘It’s a dramatic epic,’ he averred, ‘which seeks to unfold the moral and spiritual history of human civilisation.’ That should do the trick. No one in their right mind could share an interest in such an undertaking.
‘Really?’ said Sam Noble. ‘The young chap up at Lavinia’s barn is writing a narrative poem. Tell you what, we should form a writers’ group. Read each other’s work, swap ideas. What d’you say?’
There were no e-mails waiting for him when Mr Golightly was released by his visitor’s departure back to the laptop. Since Sam Noble had drained the tin of evaporated milk dry, if there was to be coffee, it meant another trip to the shop.
Immanuel Kant, Mr Golightly had heard, formed such a dependency upon coffee that, on an occasion when it was slow to arrive, he was heard to mutter, ‘Well, we can die after all; it is but dying, and in the next world, thank God, there is no coffee and consequently no waiting for it.’ Mr Golightly had begun to experience a fellow feeling with the querulous philosopher. It seemed impossible that he should embark on the revision of the work he had ironically represented to Sam Noble without the stimulus of caffeine. But after his caller he really couldn’t stomach another encounter with the bearded one up at the Post Office Stores. Maybe he would drive into Oakburton, fill the Traveller with petrol and get in some more supplies before getting down to work?
Being Friday, it was the Reverend Meredith Fisher’s day for Plymouth and Johnny Spence was lodged again in the yew tree. Its foliage was thick, little of the drizzling rain penetrated to the tree’s occupant, who lay in the fork of the trunk looking down like a watchful jaguar.
The jaguar gaze registered Mr Golightly manoeuvring the Traveller into the street. It crossed Johnny’s mind to ask for another lift; but, like any other wild animal, the coil of Johnny’s instinct was caution. His encounter with Spring Cottage’s occupant had turned out surprisingly well. But Johnny’s life to date had shown that if you trusted anyone on this earth you needed your head examined.
In any case, with the old bloke out of the way, he could get inside the house and have another snoop round.
Johnny slithered down the yew tree and nipped warily across the road and round the back of Spring Cottage, where he had noted from his first visit that the window was left unfastened. No probs – he could get in easy.
Samson sauntered over to the wire fence and stood watching as the boy creature swung his leg up and on to the sill, reached an arm inside an open window and disappeared inside.
On the other side of the window Johnny found the laptop on the gateleg table. It took five minutes to work out the means to find the password. Rapidly, he scanned the contents. Nothing interesting. No porn. A few e-mails, no sex or love stuff. There was someone called herself Muriel but she didn’t seem to amount to much.
Upstairs offered no new discoveries either. A book by the bed; Jeeves in the Offing. Nothing else different.
Downstairs there was a box of stuff. More books: Ethics by Spinoza, The Sermons of John Donne, The Odyssey, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Damon Runyon, Raymond Chandler, Philip Pullman, a load of poetry books, The Wind in the Willows – which was a kids’ book – and another book for kids Johnny’s mum had given him when he was seven, Alice. Maybe the old guy was a perve after all?
Johnny cast around looking for another unexplored quarter to assuage his curiosity. Next to the music centre there was a box of tapes and CDs – classical stuff and some rock – Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Elvis, David Bowie, the kind of stuff old ravers went for – no rap or thrash, not that you’d expect that.
Mr Golightly had driven out of the village before he remembered his credit card. As a rule, he carried no cash or card as his staff attended to all money matters for him. But part of the point of the holiday was supposed to be an opportunity to sample the pleasures of self-sufficiency. Bill, his PA, had organised a special ‘Gold’ card. There had been talk of ‘Platinum’ but Mr Golightly had rejected this – platinum, with no poetic tradition behind it, he regarded as inferior to the nobler virtues of gold. However, in assembling the usual furniture of the inner pocket of his jacket – notebook, fountain pen, propelling pencil – he had forgotten to include the neat case in which, expensively sheathed, the card had arrived from the credit-card agency. As Martha would say, he would forget his own name next!
Johnny had memories of Elvis because before his mum met his stepdad she had used to dance to a tape, Elvis: the Greatest Hits, with Johnny in her arms. Mr Golightly, returning to retrieve the card, was greeted by a familiar bass-baritone declaiming that you could do anything you chose except step on his blue suede shoes. ‘Ah,’ he said, entering the parlour where he was met by a terrified young face, ‘a fellow fan…!’
There were some Cokes still left over from the six-pack in the fridge. Johnny drank one of these while Mr Golightly made himself a cup of black coffee and they both listened to the King. However, when it came to one track, Mr Golightly made a pretext to leave the room.
The lyrics never