The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [110]
‘He restored your faith,’ Mason said.
‘He did, Nicholas. He proved to me there is a Devil. And what on earth would be the point of a Devil, my friends, without a God?’
Mason excused himself. He said that he wanted to smoke and would feel more comfortable doing so outside. Lascalles assured him that smoking was a tolerable vice in the room they were in, but Mason was emphatic. It was a lie. He had no cigarettes on him and no intention ever of smoking another one again. He had smoked all he had in Whitstable and bought no more on the TGV, where supplies in the buffet had been plentiful and cheap. The truth was, he had been shocked by how short of breath he’d felt on the run in the morning with Seaton. A decade of alternating between self-pity and fear had done little evident harm to the Irishman’s lungs or legs. His bank balance and love life may have suffered, but his fitness was impressive and his pain threshold surprisingly high. It had taken seven tough miles to bleed the competitiveness out of Seaton and the experience had left Mason short-winded and somewhat disgusted with himself. He liked to win. It was a matter of pride. And he liked to be in the best shape he could. That was a matter of survival.
He walked through a chilly vestibule that smelled of wood polish and holy water. The priest had offered them wine but, as with the food, had taken none himself. Mason well remembered how spartan had been the conditions they had found him in, huddled over his rosary, at that riverbank in Africa. Here, he suspected that Lascalles lived even less indulgently. Was it habit? Was it penance? The opulence of the library they had been shown to was strictly for public consumption. This seminary sang with the hard and vibrant piety of self-denial and rededication. He knew without having to see them that Lascalles’ quarters here would in no way reflect the man’s pastoral history or present distinction. They would make no concession, either, to frailty or to age. His choice would be a stone cell and a truckle bed and maybe the luxury of a bucket under it to piss in during the night. Lascalles was not here, as Seaton had assumed, to count out his last days in smug contemplation of his own past spiritual glories. Lascalles was here to purify his soul and face his maker and His judgment.
It was cold in the courtyard. The snow was soft and powdery under his feet in the cold. It had stopped snowing. But there were four inches of fresh powder light as spun flour under his feet and Mason wished for a moment, with all his heart, he was occupying one of the chalets in the town below, looking forward to taking the cable car to the top of the glacier in the morning. He closed his eyes and pictured the long tricky traverse and the steepling off-piste descent he had skied down so often from the top of the glacier, descending through the pale wilderness, with its blue shadows and silences. Turning ever downward. Down the remembered valley into Argentière.
He knew the mountains, too. He had climbed Mont Blanc and the Grande Jorasse and the Matterhorn as part of his training. It had been challenging and interesting to learn to do. And Mason had enjoyed the technical demands and accomplishment of each of his climbs. But he had loved far more to ski. With his eyes still closed, he felt as though he was very nearly grieving for the sensation of it now. Jesus. It was almost as though the Irishman’s sadness was a contagion, as though Paul Seaton’s persistent melancholy had crept uninvited into his own psyche.
He opened his eyes. But the mood would not lift from him. He thought for a moment about the Irishman’s lost unreconciled love. Lucinda had been her name. He’d had lovers of his own, but he didn’t think he’d loved any of them the way Paul Seaton had so briefly and poignantly loved Lucinda Grey. He’d had more than his share of drunken one-nighters. He’d had a fairly prolonged passionate romance in Germany, interrupted by the professional complications of postings and