11
THOUGH THE JOURNEY FROM Godolphin’s house in Primrose Hill to the Tabula Rasa’s tower was short, and Dowd got him up to Highgate on the dot of six, Oscar suggested they drive down through Crouch End, then up through Muswell Hill, and back to the tower, so that they’d arrive ten minutes late.
“We mustn’t seem to be too eager to prostrate ourselves,” he observed as they approached the tower for a second time. “It’ll only make them arrogant.”
“Shall I wait down here?”
“Cold and lonely? My dear Dowdy, out of the question. We’ll ascend together, bearing gifts.”
“What gifts?”
“Our wit, our taste in suits—well, my taste—in essence, ourselves.”
They got out of the car and went to the porch, their every step monitored by cameras mounted above the door. The lock clicked as they approached, and they stepped inside. As they crossed the foyer to the lift, Godolphin whispered, “Whatever happens tonight, Dowdy, please remember—”
He got no further. The lift doors opened, and Bloxham appeared, as preening as ever.
“Pretty tie,” Oscar said to him. “Yellow’s your color.” The tie was blue. “Don’t mind my man Dowd here, will you? I never go anywhere without him.”
“He’s got no place here tonight,” Bloxham said.
Again, Dowd offered to wait below, but Oscar would have none of it. “Heaven forfend,” he said. “You can wait upstairs. Enjoy the view.”
All this irritated Bloxham mightily, but Oscar was not an easy man to deny. They ascended in silence. Once on the top floor Dowd was left to entertain himself, and Bloxham led Godolphin through to the chamber. They were all waiting, and there was accusation on every face. A few—Shales, certainly, and Charlotte Feaver—didn’t attempt to disguise their pleasure that the Society’s most ebullient and unrepentant member was here finally called to heel.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Oscar said, as they closed the doors behind him. “Have you been waiting long?”
Outside, in one of the deserted antechambers, Dowd listened to his tinny little radio and mused. At seven the news bulletin brought a report of a motorway collision which had claimed the lives of an entire family traveling north for Christmas, and of prison riots that had ignited in Bristol and Manchester, with inmates claiming that presents from loved ones had been tampered with and destroyed by prison officers. There was the usual collection of war updates, then the weather report, which promised a gray Christmas, accompanied by a springlike balm. This would on past experience coax the crocuses out in Hyde Park, only to be spiked by frost in a few days’ time. At eight, still waiting by the window, he heard a second bulletin correcting one of the reports from the first. A survivor had been claimed from the entangled vehicles on the motorway: a tot of three months, found orphaned but unscathed in the wreckage. Sitting in the cold gloom, Dowd began to weep quietly, which was an experience as far beyond his true emotional capacity as cold was beyond his nerve endings. But he’d trained himself in the craft of grief with the same commitment to feigning humanity as he had learning to shiver: his tutor, the Bard; Lear his favorite lesson. He cried for the child, and for the crocuses, and was still moist-eyed when he heard the voices in the chamber suddenly rise up in rage. The door was flung open, and Oscar called him in, despite shouts of complaint from some of the other members.
“This is an outrage, Godolphin!” Bloxham yelped.
“You drive me to it!” was Oscar’s reply, his performance at fever pitch. Clearly he’d been having a bad time of it. The sinews in his neck stood out like knotted string; sweat gleamed in the pouches beneath his eyes; every word brought flecks of spittle. “You don’t know the half of it!” he was saying. “Not the half. We’re being conspired against, by forces we can barely conceive of. This man Chant was undoubtedly one of their agents. They can take human form!”
“Godolphin, this is absurd,” Alice Tyrwhitt said.
“You don’t believe me?”
“No, I don’t. And I certainly dont want your bum-boy here listening to us debate. Will you please remove him from the chamber?”