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By Root 889 0

on with what was left of his diminishing life. There were telephone calls. The actor Franchot Tone called, pretending to be Stuart Lockyear. And Jack Kerouac called, persuasive in the guise of Gregory Foyle. They were good lads, the best. But they were Patrick’s friends, rather than his, in truth. And because they were wary of his loss and tentative, he was able to put them off. Mike Whitehall called. And because Mike was his friend and colleague, too, and wouldn’t easily be put off, he called round. He parked his company Talbot Samba in the courtyard and was persistent on the knocker while Seaton hid crouched behind the front door and held his hand over his face so he wouldn’t give himself away, laughing at remembered jokes Mike had made about the comic qualities of the car. When he thought his visitor had gone, Seaton opened the door and found Mike had left a book there, on the mat. It was one he had borrowed from Seaton after picking it off the shelf on the night of the cocktail party. Returning it must have been the pretext for his visit. Mike was the sort of person who liked a pretext. The book was an illustrated history of boxing. Seaton sat down against the door jamb and flicked absently through the pages, pausing when he came to the section dealing with the life and career of Harry Greb.

A letter arrived from Lucinda. He could not make out where the stamp had been franked.

Dear Paul,

I want to say most importantly how deeply sorry I am about Patrick. He was lovely and talented and I know your heart will be broken at this terrible loss. Everything anyone says will sound like a platitude to you, but one day you might take some consolation in the happy life he led. He was full of joy and lived well on it. Most people fritter away their lives. His was always well-spent.

Please don’t think badly about what happened over my degree. A third is not the end of the world. It hasn’t stopped my collection from selling to some very prestigious stores. I only mention this at all because I don’t think it will do you any good right now to blame yourself for my not doing better. You offered to help with the best of intentions. But the suggestion was one I should never have entertained. Cheating is cheating. I was prepared to cheat and have paid the price. It’s a small price. My conscience tells me that a better degree would have been totally counterfeit in the circumstances.

I won’t be coming back while you’re in the flat, Paul. Please, please take your time finding somewhere else to live. God, I feel rotten saying this. But pretending things have not gone bad between us will be of no help to you. George in the Windmill will take the keys to the flat from you when you’re ready to give them up. In the meantime, talk to your friends, Paul. They love you and you need them now. Take care of yourself.

Goodbye and God bless,

Lucinda

Four days after Lucinda’s letter arrived, Seaton drank two pints of Director’s in the evening in the Windmill and then threatened to break the landlord’s jaw if George didn’t surrender her new telephone number and address. Half a dozen firefighters were in the pub from the neighbouring station at the end of their shift and they overpowered him and threw him into the street. He limped over the road to the green, aware that his bad knee was getting no better. He sat down in the small paved square with the single bench and the dusty cherry tree. And it was then that the full implication of what he’d seen at the Fischer house first really hit him.

She had failed. She had not got Peter out of their clutches. The boy and the sacrifice had been real. His own experience on the Isle of Wight had been real. He had been lured and pursued and almost torn to pieces by the beast they had successfully spawned in their ceremony after the horn banquet. In their contempt, they had let her go. She had spent the ten years left to her in remorseful obscurity and then died a violent death. That was the story of Pandora Gibson-Hoare. That was the story, anyway, of its outcome.

They had done it.

The boy had died and beast