the cream-coloured muslin nightdress she had spoken of, gathered under perfect breasts with a lilac ribbon, dark hair flowing round the sweetest face.
‘Tell Timothy Tovey to hurry,’ she said. ‘Tell him he is the thread that binds us together.’ At that she faded out—but not, I thought, without a slight frown at the grey pinkly-purple state of our bed-linen; though that last may be my imagination.
‘Who on earth was that?’ Poor Honor was terrified. I explained a little of the story, and she suggested, wisely, that perhaps I should do what I had been asked and get in touch with the Toveys, in case Gabriella next chose to appear in her winding sheet—no matter how beautifully made by Miss Martock—fresh from her grave and deliquesced about the eyes. A horrible thought!
So that is what I did. The Toveys lived in a magnificent house on Hyde Park. It is one of the sadder features of the GNFR that it tends to maintain, indeed even increase, such inequities as already exist between the haves and the have-nots. Although dramatic individual stories of rags to riches, riches to rags, are a common enough feature in Western societies nurtured under the GNFR, on the whole there is little social mobility. The poor just gently get poorer; the rich, not so gently, get richer: our religion seems to breed social passivity. To consent is not to strive. The idea is so important in the formation of civilisations, is it not? Notions of socialism and a fair society faded along with Christianity: the eighties finally saw them off. The GSWITS, I fear, is a great admirer of Dickens.
Be that as it may, it was obvious to me that money was the least of the Toveys’ worries. Depression, however, may well have been. I saw a Rolls Royce parked in the drive, and a Bentley in the garage, but both in a dull old-fashioned black, not the brilliant spots and swirls so popular these days. The interior of the Toveys’ house, though flawlessly decorated, was bleak and reproachful in its grandeur: the very flowers in the vases seemed to sigh and wilt in the unkind light of central chandeliers which sent unflattering shadows through the too-high rooms. The many leather couches were so plumply upholstered as to make it more likely that they would throw one off than welcome one in. It was a household run by a woman on a perpetual diet of the senses. It would be uncharitable of me to suggest a likeness between Honor and Janice Tovey—suffice it to say that I understood at once why Timothy Tovey should have sought solace in Gabriella’s arms.
Mrs Tovey being out at a fund-raising, I could not pass on Gabriella’s message to her in person—somewhat, I must say, to my relief. I was shown instead into the library, where I found Timothy Tovey, a courteous white-haired man who still had about him the remnants of the vigorous good looks of his youth. I had, I think, expected to see him bowed down by grief at the loss of Gabriella, but he seemed cheerful enough, even lively. He was obviously a man with a great appetite for life. He talked to me freely; he was a member of the GNFR and although I am not of the high priesthood I am sufficiently advanced in the lay hierarchy to hear confession, or, as we like to call it, life-story.
‘What, my Gabriella!’ he exclaimed. ‘Taped by the priests! Come back as a re-wind! Well, it doesn’t surprise me. That woman’s egocentricity would survive a hundred deaths. Waiting for me in the hereafter? Janice isn’t going to like that! Waiting for Janice, too, you say? Oh, my Lord!’ And he laughed, heartily.
I was, I must say, a little taken aback. He apologised. ‘I loved Gabriella,’ he said, ‘very much indeed at one time of my life. But is there to be no end to love? I held her hand when she died simply because she had sent for me, quite out of the blue. I had not seen her or spoken to her for twenty years: though GSWITS knows she had cost me enough in that time. And, seeing her as she was, old and ill, on
‘Tell Timothy Tovey to hurry,’ she said. ‘Tell him he is the thread that binds us together.’ At that she faded out—but not, I thought, without a slight frown at the grey pinkly-purple state of our bed-linen; though that last may be my imagination.
‘Who on earth was that?’ Poor Honor was terrified. I explained a little of the story, and she suggested, wisely, that perhaps I should do what I had been asked and get in touch with the Toveys, in case Gabriella next chose to appear in her winding sheet—no matter how beautifully made by Miss Martock—fresh from her grave and deliquesced about the eyes. A horrible thought!
So that is what I did. The Toveys lived in a magnificent house on Hyde Park. It is one of the sadder features of the GNFR that it tends to maintain, indeed even increase, such inequities as already exist between the haves and the have-nots. Although dramatic individual stories of rags to riches, riches to rags, are a common enough feature in Western societies nurtured under the GNFR, on the whole there is little social mobility. The poor just gently get poorer; the rich, not so gently, get richer: our religion seems to breed social passivity. To consent is not to strive. The idea is so important in the formation of civilisations, is it not? Notions of socialism and a fair society faded along with Christianity: the eighties finally saw them off. The GSWITS, I fear, is a great admirer of Dickens.
Be that as it may, it was obvious to me that money was the least of the Toveys’ worries. Depression, however, may well have been. I saw a Rolls Royce parked in the drive, and a Bentley in the garage, but both in a dull old-fashioned black, not the brilliant spots and swirls so popular these days. The interior of the Toveys’ house, though flawlessly decorated, was bleak and reproachful in its grandeur: the very flowers in the vases seemed to sigh and wilt in the unkind light of central chandeliers which sent unflattering shadows through the too-high rooms. The many leather couches were so plumply upholstered as to make it more likely that they would throw one off than welcome one in. It was a household run by a woman on a perpetual diet of the senses. It would be uncharitable of me to suggest a likeness between Honor and Janice Tovey—suffice it to say that I understood at once why Timothy Tovey should have sought solace in Gabriella’s arms.
Mrs Tovey being out at a fund-raising, I could not pass on Gabriella’s message to her in person—somewhat, I must say, to my relief. I was shown instead into the library, where I found Timothy Tovey, a courteous white-haired man who still had about him the remnants of the vigorous good looks of his youth. I had, I think, expected to see him bowed down by grief at the loss of Gabriella, but he seemed cheerful enough, even lively. He was obviously a man with a great appetite for life. He talked to me freely; he was a member of the GNFR and although I am not of the high priesthood I am sufficiently advanced in the lay hierarchy to hear confession, or, as we like to call it, life-story.
‘What, my Gabriella!’ he exclaimed. ‘Taped by the priests! Come back as a re-wind! Well, it doesn’t surprise me. That woman’s egocentricity would survive a hundred deaths. Waiting for me in the hereafter? Janice isn’t going to like that! Waiting for Janice, too, you say? Oh, my Lord!’ And he laughed, heartily.
I was, I must say, a little taken aback. He apologised. ‘I loved Gabriella,’ he said, ‘very much indeed at one time of my life. But is there to be no end to love? I held her hand when she died simply because she had sent for me, quite out of the blue. I had not seen her or spoken to her for twenty years: though GSWITS knows she had cost me enough in that time. And, seeing her as she was, old and ill, on
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