STARSHINE,THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Three                                                                                                      Part two


               Joe felt light headed and dazed as if on the precipice of a dreamscape from which he would fall and awaken.  He stared at the grandfather clock at the far end of the room and in  the empty silence of time unmoved, he asked himself many questions.  Who was her godson?  Had he just arrived too?  Was he somewhere else in the house?  Why such a sudden decision to make a Will?  How much would she leave ?  He blanked all these thoughts and watched old Mrs. Barker take a bottle and two rounded brandy glasses from a cupboard.  She brought them over to the table and sat down opposite Joe.  Her eyes shone with the strength and completeness of spirit which had been her life, but her body was thin and frail and close to death.  She poured out the brandies, one for Joe and one for herself.  Joe felt no other presence and heard no other sound but the silence of the house surrounding the room where Mrs. Barker was hostess and he was her godson.
                "Why did you do that ?" said Joe.
                " Because I wanted to" she answered and she raised he glass" To three million pounds ! Your future !  Your impending inheritance ! "
                 Joe did not pick up his glass " Why leave it to me ? " he asked.
                 " Because you think you want it and because you think it will make you happy. "  She despised him.  Joe lowered his eyes and remained silent.  He could not deny that so much money would make him happy, but her contempt disturbed him and did not connect with her generosity, so that he could not feel his happiness or show that he was grateful and he knew that she was watching him as he sank into sadness.
                  Joe got up to leave.  "There's been some mistake. I'd better go. "
                  He checked the car keys in his back pocket and made a move towards the door.
                  " And turn down three million pounds ?  Does that much money scare you ? "
                  " No. " he said
                  She had challenged him and Joe was defiant, " Well it should do." said the old lady quietly.  They looked hard at each other.  Joe was no longer so ready to leave.  He sat down again and tipped back his brandy.  He let the fiery liquid smother his confusion.  Mrs. Barker poured him another.  She softened " Take this and look around the house before Mr. Hodgekins arrives.  I'll stay here and rest.  " She moved herself wearily to the chaise - longue and lay down.  Once again Joe's mood had been deflected, his defiance faded, his mind was void.  So he obeyed and left the room, his glass in his hand.
                     Joe walked the stairs and landings and through doors into room upon room of nothing, empty and bare, low ceilinged rooms and high ceilinged rooms uncurtained and uncarpeted.  In one room he found the forgotten words of a pile of yellowed and browned newspapers from the Great War and on into the twenties.  He had the strange vision of standing inside a vision he had once had and finding it colourless.  He sipped his brandy and moved on to the next room.  It was a bathroom with a cast iron bath on lion's feet and a painted japanese screen of pale blossoms edged in gold.
                     In the bedroom Joe sat at the dressing table and looked into the mirror where the rooms sense of loss was reflected.  The brass bed had not been slept in since the night of a man's death.  The old oak wardrobe and chest stood sad and silent, their doors and drawers closed.  The curtains were open to include all the hours of the days and nights of waiting for his widow to follow him into timelessness.
                    High up in the house he found himself in one of the turrets.  The circular room was busy with bric-a-brac.  Underneath the window was an old school desk complete with blue stained ink well and beside it on the floor was a cluster of conches and fan shaped shells and others that were curled and spotted with pink underbellies.  Against the curving wall was a willow patterned punch bowl filled with dried earth, a china doll dressed in white lace and a torn bridal veil sat propped up against it.  One side of her face was the bluey white, translucent glaze of bone china with a pink tinged cheek.  The other side was jagged and broken away  and showed the dark emptiness inside.  Next to the china doll was a scarfed and aproned, faded russian dolly in two halves  and her eight decreasing daughters all toppled and stranded around her.  A painting hung on the wall.  It was the colour of night and starlight over the ocean and there was a small rowing boat like a tiny shadow on the gentle waves.  There was a child's Noah's ark, simply carved out of wood.  There was Noah and his wife and all the creatures two by two; the striped and the spotted, the long necked and the long nosed, the tusked and the horned, the haired and the scaled and the feathered.  In the darkest part of the room, near the door, he found a broken jigsaw puzzle.  There was no box or picture as a guide, just a mound of hundreds maybe a thousand tiny pieces and other stray ones scattered around the main pile.  Joe felt an odd sensation, a rush and a sudden arrival at the heart of some vast discovery, carefully preserved in a little round tower.  He tried to read the story, but the messages were jumbled and meaningless like the relics themselves.
                      Downstairs at the back of the house was a kitchen with a stone flagged floor.  It was dark and dingy and spartan.  There was a blackened aga stove with a flue, a wooden table and an ancient, stained sink.  There were no pots or plates or cutlery to be seen.  Joe presumed they were all neatly stacked away in the closed cupboards.  Joe was famished, he had not eaten for over a day and the brandy in his stomach was making him queasy.  He opened the larder and it was completely bare.  Then he opened the back door and found a bank of nettles where there should have been a kitchen garden.  There was no sign of any food or any indication that there had ever been any. Its absence disturbed Joe.  It was yet another misconnection, another distortion in a house where reality was miscast and thrown askance.
                       Back in the drawing room Joe picked up a brass poker and poked at the logs in the hearth.  The fire crackled and sparked.  The old lady stirred in the lightness of her sleep, she opened her eyes and watched Joe.  Joe gazed into the flames and said abstractly, " There's no food in the house."
               " No, there's no food here. " she said flatly.
               " How can you stay alive ?"
              " I'm not staying alive, I'm dying."
               " Why ?"
               She was quiet for a moment and then distant, as if her explanation was directed at someone else far away.  "Because George is dead."  She paused, " There was an energy in our souls that burned like another spirit, a third presence, a ghost we  both felt, always there.  And now he is dead the ghost is dead and I must die too. "
                  " Why ?"
                  " Because I choose to, I want to, I promised to.  And George would have done the same should I have died before him.  It was a lover's pact."
                  Joe did not understand.                
                  There was a flat, dull knock at the door.
                  "That'll be our visitor,"she said, "He's a toad." she raised herself stiffly.  "So what do I call you godson ?"
                 "Joe."
                 "Just Joe."
                 "Joe Munroe."
                There was a second impatient knock at the door.  "Well Joe Munroe, you'd better let him in hadn't you !"
                 Joe did so and came face to face with a tall, gawky, bespectacled, black suited man who was young but old.  The lawyer looked at Joe suspiciously, pushed past him and walked briskly into the drawing where Mrs. Barker was now sitting at the card table looking stern and business like.  Mr. Hodgekins looked at her questioningly, he sat opposite her and spoke in his most patronizing tones, "Well now Mrs. Barker. you've finally decided to make out a Will."
                 "Yes Mr. Hodgekins.  That is correct. "  She was doubly condescending.
                 Joe stood in the shadows at the far end of the room and observed the battle from a distance while he pretended to study the titles of books and the intricate details of the silent clock face.  Mrs. Barker sat calmly with her hands in her lap and her steady eyes on Mr. Hodgekins who swallowed uncomfortably.  Her gaze moved to his large adam's apple and his scrawny neck.  He twisted from side to side trying to loosen the awful tightness of his tie knot and starched collar.
                   "I presume your godson is involved in some way, as it is his sudden appearance that seems to have prompted you."
                  "Yes," she said "my godson Mr. Monroe is to be the sole beneficiary of my wealth and property.",
                  " I see!" said Mr. Hodgekins ironically.
                  " Good.  Then let's get the thing settled shall we ?"
                  The lawyer answered her abruptness with more patronage, " Mrs. Barker, are you sure this is wise ?"
                   " Wise !" she grew impatient " What's wisdom got to do with it ?"
                   " Mrs. Baker is this man really your godson ?"
                   " Of course he is. "
                  Mr. Hodgekins glanced down the room at the unlikely candidate for such an inheritance, his jeans, his bomber jacket and trainers and hs clear blue streetwise eyes.  The lawyer turned back to his client.  " What I mean is, we should all be certain that you haven't been persuaded against your better judgement."
                   She looked at him stonily.  "My judgement is my judgement.  There is no such thing as my better judgement."
                    The lawyer gave in.  " Very well Mrs. Barker.  If you are so determined I'll write up the Will as you wish. Its your decision."
                     She gave him a syrupy sweet smile, " I knew you'd see it my way."
                     Mr. Hodgekins lifted his executive briefcase onto the table and took out the necessary papers. He drew up a short and simple Will."  Mrs. Barker signed it, her lawyer witnessed her signature and she smiled her satisfaction.  " There ! Perfect ! That wasn't so very difficult was it ?"
                    Mr. Hodgekins stared blankly at the table top in solemn defeat.  Mrs. Barker turned to her godson, "Joe you must let Mr. Hodgekins know your address."
                   The old lady's command brought Joe back.  Since entering the house he had felt intrigue, confusion, depression and even fear.  But all these emotions had come from outside and had touched him without including him.  He had not understood his own involvement.  Facts and events had floated around him and now their edges cleared and they became solid.  As he wrote down the Soho address of his doorless room he realised that he was the subject, the beneficiary of an inheritance.
                    Mr. Hodgekins looked at the address scornfully.  He put the sheet of paper inside his briefcase which he clipped shut with a terse click.  He stood up to leave and Mrs. Barker issued her final instructions  without looking at him, " When I die you will send a telegram to Mr. Munroe informing him of my death. He will then go to your office and you will make all the necessary arrangements."
                     Mr. Hodgekins nodded grimly and left without a word.
                    Mrs. Barker looked at Joe, she was weary and dawn.  " You must go too young Joe.  Our business is complete.  Its all signed and sealed and soon will be delivered. "
                    " Thank you Mrs. Barker."
                    She softened and accepted his gratitude, " Call me Clare."
                     " Thank you Clare" he said.  And he left with what he thought he wanted.
                     " Don't thank me Joe."  But he could not hear her sad words through the doors that had already closed between them.







   

















 


 






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