STARSHINE. THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter three                                                                                                             Part thirteen






                  The sky blue, rusting morris minor coughed and spluttered but it ran.  Joe drove and drove, he was aware of the controls and the traffic but his mind was blank and his direction blind.
                   It was afternoon when he drove through the wood.  Ash gold rays from the lowering sun slanted through the branches.  He turned off the road up a lane.  The wheels crunched over gravel and the engine strained against the incline.  Only then did Joe know where he was.  He drew up at the gate.  The garden path was an avenue of waist high grass, the cracks in the curved stairway seemed wider and the edges of the stone steps more crumbled.  The gargoyle knocker no longer scared him and the door was ajar, so he walked in.  His footsteps were slow and  soft as a cat's as he entered the drawing room and stood behind Clare.  She was sitting in a rocking chair in a patch of sunlight that fell through the window.  There was a glass of brandy on a table beside her.  She gazed out into the haze of bright light on dirty glass.  She did not turn to look at Joe.  She sat very still, like a dark shadow, her head outlined in a halo of intense white light.
                  " Hello godson ! "  Her quiet words filled him and made him know why he was there.  She was his godmother.