my way back, gingerly touching various draped things to confirm their sheer reality, doing it with an outstretched palm so as not to feel any clear definition. Then I locked the door and returned to the kitchen.
What to do? Tell Jack? Phone him at 11:30? Call Mick or Lou or Paul and Angie? Julia? How I needed to. But I needed the illusion of managing even more. I was alone on the flight deck, but it was my flight deck.
Finding the bottle-trees like that had given me a bad scare, but there was nothing subjective and solitary about it. It had happened in the outside world, the world that others shared. I put on music, set the jug going for tea, and stood in the bright kitchen calming myself. Maybe I’d switch on the computer and check emails, maybe even risk another TT, check the black page again, use one lot of fear to dislodge another.
Then the phone rang.
I answered on the third ring, had the immediate reassurance of music playing in someone’s living room, then Carlo’s rich voice.
‘David? I was hoping you hadn’t gone to bed yet. Raina and I just wanted to make sure you got home safely and to say how good it was to have you here tonight.’
I felt such relief that I had to lean against the kitchen table. Bless you, Carlo Risi .
‘Carlo, thanks for calling. I had a marvellous time. I really did. You were both very kind.’
‘Well, you understand how it was. We had to do a dance. And you won us the Cannonau. You will keep in mind what I said about visiting.’
‘I will. Of course I will. Thank you.’
‘Good. And, oh yes, Raina is reminding me. She thinks she may know where the key for the tower is. She will look for it tomorrow. We may have our picnic after all.’
‘That would be great. Just great.’
‘Goodnight then, David. Buona sera .’
‘Goodnight, Carlo, and thank you. Please thank Raina. Goodnight.’
I hadn’t mentioned the shattered bottle-trees or my fear. I’d wanted the humanity of these new friends, the treasured ordinariness of a courtesy phonecall at the end of a vivid and trying evening.
I made the tea, switched off the sound system, and took my cup to the bedroom, set it down next to the second-hand copy of Mary Renault’s The Mask of Apollo .
Leave one thing, I’d told Beth Rankin in a phonecall before they left on their travels, just one. Something mild to test me. And there it had been beside my newly made bed when I arrived, this old 1980 reprint of Renault’s 1966 novel, with a tilted gold theatrical mask of the god on the cover, surrounded by charcoal-grey rays. One eye socket had an iris and pupil; the other contained only darkness. I’d been so glad to find it there. It had become the first and last tolerance test of any day and I treasured its presence now.
I lay atop the covers and considered the events of the day. I was exhausted, exhilarated and, yes, fearful: bothered by the fate of the bottle-trees, concerned about the tower and the Scarecrow Cross, troubled all over again by the black page on the TT disk.
Paranoia was there too. Once the thoughts began connecting up, there was no stopping it. What if Jack hadn’t added the image? What if someone else had done it; worse yet had come in this evening while I was out and added new images to the disks? I had to know.
In moments I was back in the study, had the Rankin’s computer booted and was loading TT Disk 4.
Still thirty-one images. Check. I grabbed a pen and wrote a big numeral 4 on the disk, then scrawled my signature. My name, my disk. Accept no substitutes. It was breaking self-imposed rules but I didn’t care. The rules had changed.
One by one, I loaded and opened the other three disks. The image neighbourhoods were as they should be: seven images by four plus two. No new additions.
That I could tell!
What if Jack, whoever it was, hadn’t made the tampering obvious, hadn’t just added an image this time but had first deleted one so that the image neighbourhood looked the same? How would I
What to do? Tell Jack? Phone him at 11:30? Call Mick or Lou or Paul and Angie? Julia? How I needed to. But I needed the illusion of managing even more. I was alone on the flight deck, but it was my flight deck.
Finding the bottle-trees like that had given me a bad scare, but there was nothing subjective and solitary about it. It had happened in the outside world, the world that others shared. I put on music, set the jug going for tea, and stood in the bright kitchen calming myself. Maybe I’d switch on the computer and check emails, maybe even risk another TT, check the black page again, use one lot of fear to dislodge another.
Then the phone rang.
I answered on the third ring, had the immediate reassurance of music playing in someone’s living room, then Carlo’s rich voice.
‘David? I was hoping you hadn’t gone to bed yet. Raina and I just wanted to make sure you got home safely and to say how good it was to have you here tonight.’
I felt such relief that I had to lean against the kitchen table. Bless you, Carlo Risi .
‘Carlo, thanks for calling. I had a marvellous time. I really did. You were both very kind.’
‘Well, you understand how it was. We had to do a dance. And you won us the Cannonau. You will keep in mind what I said about visiting.’
‘I will. Of course I will. Thank you.’
‘Good. And, oh yes, Raina is reminding me. She thinks she may know where the key for the tower is. She will look for it tomorrow. We may have our picnic after all.’
‘That would be great. Just great.’
‘Goodnight then, David. Buona sera .’
‘Goodnight, Carlo, and thank you. Please thank Raina. Goodnight.’
I hadn’t mentioned the shattered bottle-trees or my fear. I’d wanted the humanity of these new friends, the treasured ordinariness of a courtesy phonecall at the end of a vivid and trying evening.
I made the tea, switched off the sound system, and took my cup to the bedroom, set it down next to the second-hand copy of Mary Renault’s The Mask of Apollo .
Leave one thing, I’d told Beth Rankin in a phonecall before they left on their travels, just one. Something mild to test me. And there it had been beside my newly made bed when I arrived, this old 1980 reprint of Renault’s 1966 novel, with a tilted gold theatrical mask of the god on the cover, surrounded by charcoal-grey rays. One eye socket had an iris and pupil; the other contained only darkness. I’d been so glad to find it there. It had become the first and last tolerance test of any day and I treasured its presence now.
I lay atop the covers and considered the events of the day. I was exhausted, exhilarated and, yes, fearful: bothered by the fate of the bottle-trees, concerned about the tower and the Scarecrow Cross, troubled all over again by the black page on the TT disk.
Paranoia was there too. Once the thoughts began connecting up, there was no stopping it. What if Jack hadn’t added the image? What if someone else had done it; worse yet had come in this evening while I was out and added new images to the disks? I had to know.
In moments I was back in the study, had the Rankin’s computer booted and was loading TT Disk 4.
Still thirty-one images. Check. I grabbed a pen and wrote a big numeral 4 on the disk, then scrawled my signature. My name, my disk. Accept no substitutes. It was breaking self-imposed rules but I didn’t care. The rules had changed.
One by one, I loaded and opened the other three disks. The image neighbourhoods were as they should be: seven images by four plus two. No new additions.
That I could tell!
What if Jack, whoever it was, hadn’t made the tampering obvious, hadn’t just added an image this time but had first deleted one so that the image neighbourhood looked the same? How would I
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