He was getting up now. Turning to take her in his arms. His eyes moved intently over her face, as if stamping every individual feature to memory. And asking a silent question. Joyce laughed and said, ‘If we were really imbued with the spirit of adventure we would fall to here and now on the kitchen table.’
‘Eh?’
‘I was reading this article on how to be sexually spontaneous. In the hairdresser’s.’
‘Who the hell wants to be sexually spontaneous in the hairdresser’s?’
‘Called “How To Keep Your Marriage Alive”.’
‘How to put your back out more like. No’ - they linked arms and made their way into the hall - ‘it’s the boring marital bed again I’m afraid, sweetheart.’
‘Dreary old missionary.’
‘You knew my faith when I proposed.’
After they had made love Joyce fell quickly asleep, her head on her husband’s breast, still cradled in his arms. Not wishing to disturb her he eased an extra pillow beneath his shoulders and half sat, half reclined, running over the events of the day, the previous day, the one before that. Searching his mind for connections and resonances, hidden meanings, false interpretations.
He did not dwell at any length on that evening’s debriefing, for it had been unprofitable to say the least. It produced only one new scrap of information and that from the outdoor team. In 1983 Beecham’s Removals had collected Gerald Hadleigh’s furniture and personal effects, neither from Kent nor London SW1, but from a storage depot in Staines.
This being the sum total on offer, Barnaby had then offered his notes on the interview with Mrs Lyddiard, plus his ideas on Hadleigh’s feminine alter ego, which had been received with a mixture of wary caution and polite incredulity. Indeed, as he described the psychological persona that he had so confidently constructed earlier in the day, he started to wonder himself if it was not so much imaginative as imaginary.
Eventually he slept, dozing and waking intermittently, disturbed by the wind howling through the trees and a branch tapping on the window. At one point, in that dark hinterland between sleeping and waking, he found himself walking down a narrow street of bulbous cobblestones illuminated sporadically by pools of ochre-coloured light. He was carrying something very heavy. His arms were stretched out parallel and this heavy object lay, a dead weight, across them. Not that it was dead in fact for there were shallow, panting sounds emanating from it.
He halted beneath an overhead iron bracket holding a funnel, from which the strangely coloured light was flowing, to take a closer look at his burden. It was a seal. Lumpen and graceless on land, its prickly grey-brown fur was dull and dry. The head hung loosely down. There was a strange mark - a ring of darker fur, like a collar or noose - about its neck. As he stood holding it, concerned and perplexed, it turned a pointed, doggy face and stared at him. The round eyes were also dull and covered with a gluey film. He realised, with a shock of horror, that it was dying.
He must find water. He started to walk as quickly as he was able. In his mind there was a picture, just around the bend of the street, of a river. He remembered the bridge, people fishing. He staggered along, knees buckling, sweat streaming from his face and hair. But, when he finally turned the corner, the river and bridge had disappeared. In its place was an open sandy plain on which strange animals roamed.
Barnaby looked into the seal’s clouded eyes. They seemed to bestow no blame for his stupidity, only to be consumed by a quiet and terrible sadness. He could not bear it and began once more to struggle on. The world was full of water. Surely soon he must find some.
The surface of the pavement had become transformed. It was now spongy and yielding and his feet sank further in with every step. It was cold too. He felt the chill dampness of it seeping over the edge of his shoes. There was moisture on his hands and he saw that silvery froth had formed around the animal’s mouth. The yellow lights were getting dim.
Then, just as he felt his back was breaking, he saw, shining at his feet, a puddle. He lowered the seal into it, feeling the muscles of his arms jump and quiver at the moment of release. The seal turned over and over in the water. Its fur sparkled, the eyes and whiskers shone. Then, as Barnaby watched, the beads of light on its coat and the reflected light in the puddle conjoined until the seal and the water were one oddly shaped mass of gleaming silver. Trees, tall as telegraph poles, sprang up all around. Faxes chattered in their branches and reams of paper tumbled down. A woman, veiled all in black, appeared and disappeared, rushing through the air, draperies flying, on a high swing. The mysterious silver shape was becoming transformed into something longer and more streamlined.