STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter six                                                                                                            part two



                      I have been to London and returned again to my tower and my desk.  It is three days since I saw her. But what are days?  What are nights ? What is time ? Now that I have begun this journey time must be ignored.  Haste would lead me to some vile compromise, a disillusionment that it would have been better never to have begun, never to have stepped out onto the road.  It is not a journey of roads and directions I will choose and then travel, it is a journey of roads and directions that will come to me when it considers me ready and there will be no accounting for the passing of years, if I am to find her.
                     Time has always stood like a cloaked spectre at my shoulder, pushing me on towards death, holding up its black robes to block out the lights of discovery and reflection.  There will be no clocks or calendars while I search. 
                      My trip to London was the first stage of my journey.  It was a preparation, a purchasing of a ticket.
                    I had packed all my clothes and trinkets, my suits, my tweeds, every outfit for every occasion, my insignia of wealth and belonging.  They filled three trunks.  At Waterloo station I watched them being unloaded from the train.  I looked at them on the platform. They were unnamed and unlabelled.  I walked away.  My step was light as though I had shed many skins that had grown hard on my back and shadowed my heart.
                   I walked through the city from office to office, from broker to banker to lawyer. My task was to extricate myself from the web of finance and the compulsive, infinite weaving of its sticky threads.  I sold my stocks and recalled my shares.  I held my wealth in one hand in deeds, bonds and bankers' notes, three million pounds, just pieces of paper.  I folded them down and put them inside a small leather pouch.  I drew and tied the thongs and the pouch was closed.  I placed the pouch inside a leaden box embossed with a unicorn.  I sealed the box with candle wax.  I took the sealed box to my bank and locked it in a vault.  I went to m y lawyer and gave him the key to the deposit box.  Then I was free.
                          The summer heat baked the city streets, while each office was chilly.  I carried the sun with me into each meeting, its light shone from my eyes.  My face was stern while my heart smiled.  I said little.  I watched.  I had once carried their faces and their armour as my own.  I had also been a warrior blind to the loss of life in battle.  But now I had laid down my shield and my spear, my knuckles were no longer white with the need to clutch them and believe in their protection.  I had no protection and no weapon.  My defencelessness was my power.  I had uncovered my body and my face.  The light that shone from my eyes said,
                                                                                      " This is who I am "
                                                                                                                       In every office, across every desk my silence said,
                                             " This is who I am. "
                                                                               They could not draw me back through the wheels and the cogs because my silence simply said,
                                                                         " No. "
                                                                                      I could not be drawn back to their sense of duty, their established patronage and competition.  My silence said,
                                                                                                    " No. "
                                                                                                                I watched their fear rise as they realised that to question me was to question what was to them unquestioned.  I watched my conquered rivals falter and die.  My commands were obeyed and my enemies slain.
                       I gave Mr Hodgekins the key.  I told him it must be submitted to no one but the unicorn.  I did not know why. I hope I am not the unicorn.
                       Tomorrow I will leave this notebook and pen in my desk in my tower.  Tomorrow I will leave this house.  I will wander through its rooms and touch its furniture.  I will wait until the old grandfather clock stops and then I will leave.  I will leave Time unwound and sleeping.
                       I love this house.  My mother and father lived here.  They were distant and quiet.  I did not know them.  They did not know me.  I lived here alone as a child and still I live here alone.  This is my home.  Tomorrow I must close it up.
                       But I will return.  I sit at my desk and look through the window of my tower.  It is night and the moon is full.  Clouds like black smoke pass in front of the bright moon so that it fades and clears but it never disappears.