A Willing Victim (13 page)

‘You look as if you’re in quite a bit of pain,’ Ballard murmured when the woman, still apologising, was dispatched to fetch a cloth to mop up the mess on the table.

‘I’ll live,’ said Stratton, through gritted teeth. ‘Let’s have the next one, shall we?’

This proved to be a spruce middle-aged man who exuded a version of Miss Kirkland’s joyousness and enthusiasm so great that he seemed to be permanently leaning forwards. So keen was he to tell them about the Foundation’s ‘power for good’ that they had a hard job getting him to say anything about Lloyd at all. His story of his first meeting with Roth was, Stratton thought, not dissimilar to Tynan’s, and told in much the same language, except that the death of a beloved mother was replaced by a general disillusion with the state of the world and a feeling of powerlessness to change either it, or himself. He talked of a new experience of ‘oneness’ with his surroundings, a heightening of his senses and a consciousness of a deeper level of existence.

There was a lot more of this as the morning progressed – a procession of straight-backed, smartly dressed individuals who, although giving every appearance of being helpful, were actually much more interested in telling Stratton and Ballard how the Foundation had changed their lives for the better than in shedding even the smallest light on why Lloyd might have been killed. They had all arrived at the Foundation after him, and after Ananda and Michael. None of them had seen Lloyd since
he’d left in April, none of them had given him money, and none of them seemed to know anything about his writing a book, either. They expressed disgust at the idea that he might have had any sort of intimate relationship with Ananda, and, although she’d told several of them about the film she’d seen on the 30th, none of them seemed to have any clue at all as to her present whereabouts. Whether Roth had instructed them to tell him nothing, or whether they genuinely didn’t know, Stratton wasn’t sure, but the whole thing had a curiously stage-managed feeling. He imagined Roth sitting upstairs, the all-seeing, all-knowing presence, and the students reporting back to him after they’d been interviewed. He was reminded, oddly, of the annual village concerts of his boyhood – the muttered tension behind the scenes as each child was pushed through the curtain to sing or recite in front of a throng of proud but anxious parents. And – now he came to think of it – those occasions were always full of the same stuff, too: sentimental for the girls, rousing Victorian patriotism for the boys.

A male student spoke, with an ease born of practice, of having had a drink problem, another of being dogged by illness; a woman spoke about grief at the death of her fiancé, another of a feeling of hopelessness, another of a feeling that she could sense things that other people did not, and several of both sexes, including Miss Kirkland, of a feeling that there must be ‘something more to life’. They seemed, too, to have a collective dislike for the personal pronoun, replacing ‘I’ with ‘one’ at every opportunity. Over and over again Stratton heard the same words and phrases – truth, wisdom, unity – until, two hours in, he felt that, barring changeable particulars, he could have recited their scripts for them without too much difficulty. Besides the revelation of meeting Roth, a marked theme was the futility, stupidity and general crappiness of the outside world, from its politics to its popular music. It was clear that at the Foundation they felt
themselves safe, in their straight-laced, well-ordered world, with all forms of vulgar modernity kept at bay. That, thought Stratton, was presumably the reason Michael was taught here – to ensure that he remained as unsullied as possible.

Left alone for a few minutes between the departure of one student and the arrival of the next, Ballard, who looked as punch-drunk as Stratton felt, murmured, ‘They don’t blink much, do they?’

‘Perhaps it’s something they’ve learnt.’

‘Downright creepy, if you ask me. And have you noticed how tired they look?’

Stratton, who’d noticed a lot of pinkish eyes, nodded. ‘Perhaps that’s part of it, too.’ He waved a hand at the quotation on the wall about the big stick. ‘From what they’re saying, it sounds like a pretty full programme – manual labour as well as lectures and meditation and what not. Must be the discipline that Roth was telling me about when he suddenly blew up about sex.’

‘They’re all sincere, though, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, I do. True believers – I think they can’t understand why everyone isn’t doing it. They’re well-intentioned, too. And I can’t really see how you could say they’re brainwashed when they obviously
want
to believe that this is a higher way of life or whatever you want to call it. I mean, it works for them, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ Stratton rubbed the back of his neck. ‘But it’s not getting us very far, is it?’

Ballard shook his head despondently. ‘Give me a decent villain, any day.’

‘I suppose,’ said Stratton, remembering what Tynan had said about how the place was financed, ‘that most of them must have private means. If they had to work for a living, I don’t see how—’

‘If they had to work for a living,’ said Ballard dismissively, ‘they wouldn’t have time to muck about with all this. After all, if you’ve
got money, it’s easy to say that material possessions don’t matter. Rise above the daily grind, and all that.’

‘Not the only thing they’re meant to rise above,’ said Stratton. ‘Roth said the sex instinct was …’ He leafed through his notebook. ‘“Debased and gross.” He said something about not being a slave to one’s impulses, as well. Still, if Mary/Ananda is as sexy as you say she is’ – Stratton pretended to ignore the slight flush that had crept into Ballard’s cheeks – ‘then she must have caused a bit of a stir, at least. Perhaps Lloyd was having an affair with her and one of the other chaps was jealous.’

‘It’s not impossible, I suppose, but they don’t seem the type, do they? I mean, if one of the blokes we’ve seen this morning was jealous, I should have thought he’d be more likely to have the spiritual equivalent of a cold shower than get on a train to London and do his rival in. I’ve never met this Roth bloke, but I can sense his presence all right.’

By the end of the morning, Stratton felt himself having to make a supreme effort not to slump in his chair as the last student arrived. Like the others, Miss Banting was polite, well spoken and middle class, but she seemed a different type, several years younger than nearly all of them and dressed not in tidy tweeds but unseasonably, in the sort of clothes Stratton thought of as ‘arty’: a dirndl skirt and a blouse in the peasant style with a parti-coloured woollen shawl flung dramatically over her shoulders. Her eyebrows, above thick spectacles, were painted in arches of surprise – or possibly menace – and she wore a necklace which looked as though it had been made out of chunks of wood, and a bracelet which seemed to have been constructed for the purpose of noise-making. She was, Stratton realised, the first student he’d seen who looked distinctive: she’d retained the trappings of her former life and personality, whereas the others, to a man and woman, were unadorned and bland.

Despite this, her composure and responses were as uniform as the others’ had been, with much made of her need to find a meaning to life and wish to connect to a higher awareness – until Stratton asked her whether she’d seen Jeremy Lloyd since he’d left the Foundation.

Her eyes widened in outraged surprise. ‘Of course not!’

‘Why “of course”?’ asked Stratton.

‘One does not communicate with those who leave.’ Her tone was vehement. ‘We are told—’

Here, the man who had seated himself outside the door gave a discreet but audible cough. It was an innocuous sound, but it stopped Miss Banting in her tracks as absolutely as the shout of ‘Stop!’ Stratton had heard on his previous visit to the Foundation had arrested the woodcutters in mid-chop. For a moment she froze, mouth partially open and then, as swiftly as if a light had been extinguished, the passion left her face. She glanced apprehensively upwards, much, Stratton thought, as a medieval peasant might, who feared he had angered heaven and would bring down the wrath of God upon himself – or, in Miss Banting’s case, the wrath of Roth.

‘I simply meant,’ she said, after a moment, ‘that I had not seen him. I’m afraid that one has rather a habit of complicating things. We were told that he had gone to live in London, so of course, being here, there was no opportunity to see him.’

‘I see,’ said Stratton. And he did see, very clearly, that leaving the Foundation meant excommunication, in the manner of the Catholic Church. Either you were in or you were out, and there were no halfway measures – except, of course, for Tynan, but then he’d paid for the place and, equally clearly, had a foot in both camps. But for all Roth’s insistence that he’d ‘neither approved nor disapproved’ of the fact that Lloyd was writing a book, the leader had cast him out as surely as Adam and Eve had been expelled from Paradise.

Returning to London with a sense of futility, Stratton thought that this, after Lloyd’s knock-back from the priesthood, must have come as a double blow. Nodding off at home over the
Daily Express
–
EISENHOWER: SUEZ ATTACK AN ERROR
, alongside adverts for Nestlé’s Condensed Milk and Craven A – he was trying to summon up the energy to go upstairs to bed when a thunderous banging on the front door announced Pete. ‘Penny for the guy, guv? Remember the fifth of November, and all that.’

‘Last time I looked, it was only the third.’ Stratton stood back to let his son enter. ‘I wasn’t expecting you, was I?’

‘No. Sorry, it’s so late.’ Dumping his kitbag on the hall floor, Pete headed for the scullery, saying, over his shoulder, ‘I came by earlier but you weren’t in and I’ve lost my key, so I went to the pub. We’re shipping out tomorrow. I’d have written, but they’ve been mucking us about so I wasn’t sure … Don’t mind if I stay, do you?’

‘Course not.’ Stratton followed him, stifling a yawn. ‘If you’re looking for beer, there’s some under the sink.’

‘Oh, good show … Join me?’

Reflecting that this was pretty well par for the course – for the last few years the only conversations he had with his son
seemed to take place when Pete, on leave and glassy-eyed from the pub, crashed in late at night – Stratton said, ‘Why not?’

Stratton looked at Pete, settled in the armchair opposite, and wondered why it was that the sheer size of him – a good inch taller than his own six feet three and, thanks to all the army’s training, he seemed almost to pulsate with muscularity and health – continued to be a source of wonder. It was, he supposed, because he saw the boy – although, at twenty-four, he was hardly that any more – so infrequently. He seemed, Stratton thought, to have sprung full-grown a few years ago from National Service, fathered anew by the army, and the beer he’d consumed made him sprawl, so that he took up even more space than usual.

‘… do you think he’s all right?’ Pete was saying.

‘Sorry, old chap, I’m not with you. Do I think who is all right?’

Pete gave him a sharp look – obviously not as tipsy as all that, thought Stratton – and said, ‘You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?’

‘Bit tired,’ said Stratton apologetically. ‘Been a long day. Who are we talking about?’

‘Uncle Reg.’

‘Why shouldn’t he be all right?’ asked Stratton, remembering, belatedly, that Monica had said something about Reg looking ‘under the weather’.

‘I don’t know, really …’ Pete frowned. ‘It’s just that he was in the pub, so we had a chat about going to Egypt and all that, and … Well, you know how he’s always got an opinion about everything?’

Stratton grimaced. ‘Don’t I just.’

‘I thought he was bound to start pontificating about it, giving me a lecture – you know, the World According to Reginald Booth – but he didn’t. Just wished me luck, and … Well, that was all, really. And he’s not so fat as he used to be, either.’

‘Isn’t he?’

‘Haven’t you noticed?’

‘Can’t say I have. But that’s good, surely? Mind you, if he’s been on some sort of … slimming cure, you’d think we’d have been treated to a lot of stuff about the joys of rabbit food and … I don’t know … charcoal biscuits.’

Stratton thought Pete might laugh at this, or at least smile, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, ‘He’s not looking well, Dad.’

As Pete’s attitude to his uncle had always been – much like that of the rest of the family – either resigned or irritated, Stratton was pricked by his obvious concern. ‘If he’s put himself on some faddy diet, it’s hardly surprising. He’s probably just feeling a bit out of sorts.’

‘It was a bit weird, though …’ Pete didn’t look convinced. ‘Usually, you can’t shut him up.’

‘Thank God for the rabbit food, then,’ said Stratton. ‘Mind you, he did drag your Uncle Don and me off to see Billy Graham a couple of days ago.’

‘The God bloke?’ Pete raised his eyebrows.

Stratton nodded. ‘Come to think of it, I thought he was a funny colour then.’

‘There you are, then. You might ask him if he’s all right, Dad. Next time you see him, I mean.’

It was unlike Pete to be so solicitous, but Stratton, recalling something he’d heard about the forces asking men to make their wills before going into theatres of war, decided it must be to do with that. He tried to push away the image that accompanied this train of thought – his son’s broken body lying in the desert – but it lingered on, stubborn, in the corner of his mind’s eye. The Pete sitting opposite him looked too solid, too
vital
, even to
be
mortal – but then millions of fathers must, over the years, have felt the same thing about their sons and been proved horribly, heartbreakingly, wrong.

Stratton drank some beer and was trying to think of a subject of conversation that was far enough away from their respective jobs not to have anything to do with impending or actual death when Pete said, ‘What’s all this I hear about you having a girlfriend, then?’

Whatever else he expected his son to say, it wasn’t that and, caught in mid-swallow, Stratton choked.

‘Blimey, Dad!’ Pete jumped up, narrowly missing the occasional table and, before Stratton could raise a hand to stop him, began bashing him between the shoulder blades. It was like being hit with a shovel.