STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter three                                   The Godson                                                          Part one


                   The cherry red porsche rode fast over the smooth surface of a road that wove its way through a patchwork world of green and brown fields outlined with hedgerows like a blanket spread over gentle hills, dips and slopes, its colours muted by a white veil of morning frost.  The winter sun sat small and high in a blue cloudless sky that was clean and cold.  And so too was Joe's mind clean and cold.  All visions and memories of greyness were forgotten.  His easy control of the car and its speed freed him as he drove on, over an empty road from horizon to horizon, through a landscape of no one but himself.
                 He entered a leafless wood.  An ancient graveyard of twisted trees, cracked and dry like grey bones.  Their roots stood in an eerie darkness and their gnarled branches arched overhead where the sun's rays fell through them like white ghosts.  Joe drove through patterns of shadow and weird light.
                 The road was open again and the wood was behind him when he saw and recognised the house.  It was high on a hilltop.  As the wheels of the porsche crunched over the gravel lane that ran up the slope in a straight line from the road to the house, he saw on either side of him,grass of frosted velvet green.  He knew he had been here before but he did not know when and he did not know why he was here now, but he was.
                  He pulled up in front of the garden gate and got out of the car.  He entered the garden to the sound of the gate's rusted iron hinges.  The garden was wild and tangled.  Winter stripped bushes mixed with evergreen shrubs of all shades, and long thorny branches crept, straggled and draped themselves like lethal ropes ready to ensnare. The grass was tough and high and stiff with the frost that glittered like a mesh of tiny crystals.  Joe looked up at the house and every strange detail was known to him; the stone tiled roof patched with lichen, the capped turrets, the tall chimneys, the falls of ivy over the walls and the speckled colours in the grey stonework.  He looked in through the window and the black silence beyond them was also known to him.  He felt heavy and bewildered with the clear recognition of a house he had never seen and the exact recollection of a place he had never been.  He walked up the path that was half hidden  by long grass.  He climbed the steps of the curved, stone stairway, treading over cracks where green weeds pushed through grey stone.  He looked at the oaken door a while and his hand reached out to the vile brass face on the doorknocker he knew that this too was a repetition of something remembered and forgotten.
                  Joe's eyes and mind were drawn and spurned by a small gargoyle face, when the door was opened a crack and a woman's old and gentle voice said to him "Its to keep away evil."
                  "I'm not evil."  Joe did not understand his own sudden response, full of fear and guilt, unveiled and ugly like the doorknocker's blank, bulbous eyes and empty leering mouth.  And then the door was wide open and Joe's eyes were on the old woman standing in its frame.  She was thin and wrinkled.  Her eyes were deep brown, her grey hair was drawn back and pinned up.  The soft  careful tones of her voice were full of strength and goodness.
                   "My dear boy, nobody said you were."  They looked at each other and in the silence Joe felt her eyes move through his soul where everything was bared and judged, and he shrank.  " Come in !" Her command was natural and offhand as if his visit had been expected.  She turned and walked into the house with a grace that had stiffened with age.  Joe followed her.
                 The drawing room was musty with dust and neglect.  The walls were lined with bookcases filled with leather bound books.  Balding persian rugs covered the floor.  There was a clutter of cabinets, sideboards and small tables of various antique shades and grains of mahogany, rosewood and walnut.  There was a grandfather clock at the far end of the room.  Its hands were stuck at half past five, its pendulum did not swing, it made no sound.  There was a suite of two armchairs and a chaise-longue upholstered in faded velvet of greying salmon pink.  The old woman told him to sit down, so he sat on one of the velvet chairs between a circular card table and the fireplace.  The chair felt awkward, he could not relax in it.  First he folded his arms, then he put them on the chair  arms, then he put his hands on his knees and was acutely conscious of the fact that he had never in his life sat with a hand on each knee.  he moved and fidgeted but each alien position simply led to another as ridiculous.  He looked at the old lady.  She looked back at him with her calm, steady eyes.  She stood at the sideboard, picked up the receiver of an old fashioned telephone and began dialling, letting the  dial run back slowly to its beginning between each number.  Her poise was graceful and tranquil.  She was dressed in black, in the style and simple elegance of the twenties.  Joe's blue jeans and cream jacket suddenly felt shabby and ill fitting.  He heard the ringing tone at the other end of the call.  He felt the warmth from the hearth where orange and yellow flames licked and curled over blackened logs.  He looked at the card table next to him, there was an inlaid chess board in its centre.  Joe was examining the perfect squares of dark ebony and light boxwood when he heard the old lady's words.  "Hello!" Could I have a word with your nice Mr. Hodgekins please dear?"  Her voice was full of kindness but for Mr. Hodgekins her words became sterner with a stubborn authority, edged with charm.  "Mr. Hodgekins? Its me Mrs. Barker.  I'd like you to come round right away.  I've decided to make out a Will after all."  She paused, then as an afterthought she added, "My godson has just arrived.  Having made her cryptic announcement she casually replaced the receiver.