A Creed for the Third Millennium (26 page)

But it wasn't hard after all to meet her
eyes and assimilate the face which encapsulated them. Her smile was very warm
and glad to see him, yes, yet it laid no claim to his spirit and it embraced him
only as a dear friend.

'I can only stay an hour or so,' she
said, settling back into her chair. 'I wanted to see how you were, how you feel
about the book — I've read it, incidentally, and I think it's magnificent. I
want to know too what you plan to do when it's published, if you've thought
about that.' He looked bewildered. 'Do? Published?' 'First things first. The
book. Are
you
happy with it?' 'Oh, yes. Yes, of course I am. And I'm so
grateful to you for steering me to Atticus, Judith. The woman they gave me was —
was—' He moved his shoulders helplessly. 'I don't honestly know how to explain
it. But she worked with me like the bit of me that's always been missing. And
together we wrote exactly the book I've always wanted to write.' He laughed a
little ruefully. 'That is, if I had ever seriously entertained the idea. I
didn't. Did I? It's hard to remember that far back. So much has happened.' He
frowned uneasily and moved in his chair. 'It's one thing to work to achieve an
end, Judith, but somehow this book is more like a gift from outside. As if my
subconscious had expressed a wish, and genie Judith appeared from nowhere to
grant it in full.'

What a mixture the man was! Dangerously
perceptive at times, at other times simple and innocent to the point of naivety.
Astonishing, that with the light switched off he was the epitome of an
absent-minded and particularly woolly professor, the sort you pinned a note to
bearing his name and address and telephone number in case he G. K. Chestertoned
off into the blue and didn't come back. But when the light
was switched on, a demigod appeared, vibrant and steely-minded and electrifying.
My dearest Joshua, she thought, you do not know it and I pray you never find
out, but I am going to work the arc lights of your very soul!

'Have they told you yet what they expect
from you when the book is actually published?' she asked.

Again he looked puzzled. 'When it's
published? I do seem to remember Lucy's saying something, but what would they
expect of me? I've done my share already.'

'Oh, I think they're going to want
considerably more from you than just the act of producing the book,' she said
crisply. 'It is a very important book, therefore you will become a very
important person. And you'll be asked to do a publicity tour, make personal
appearances — television, radio, luncheons and lectures, stuff like that. I'm
afraid you'll also be asked to grant interviews to a lot of papers and magazines
too.'

He looked eager. 'But that's marvellous!
Even though the book is me — and you've no idea how glad I am to be able to say
that! — still I would much rather
talk
about my ideas.'

'That's just great, Joshua. Because I
happen to agree with you, the best transmitter is definitely you in the flesh.
So I want you to regard the publicity tour they'll ask you to make as the ideal
opportunity to reach many more people than ever you could hope to see in your
clinic' She paused, a delicate and peculiarly pregnant break in speech; in a
patient he would have recognized it as the preface to a thought the patient
wished to implant in him so that the tissue of lies which inevitably followed
would sound utterly sincere. But what she said didn't live up to that pause, for
she merely said, 'I have always regarded the book as a secondary objective, a
reason to offer the media you in the flesh.'

'Have you? I thought you wanted the book
above all.'

'No. The book is a subsidiary of the
man.'

He left the statement unremarked. 'Well,
I'm sure Lucy did mention a publicity tour, but I can't remember when or how.
I'm sorry, Judith. I think I must be very tired. Not keeping track of things.
It's been hard these last few weeks, writing with Lucy and treating patients on
my usual schedule. I'm a bit short on sleep.'

'You've got the whole summer to rest up
in,' she said brightly. 'Atticus will gear itself to publish in the autumn, just
before mass exodus begins and just as mass depression sets in. That's the
logical moment to release this book. The people will be ready for it.
Ripe.'

'Yes… Mmmm… Thanks for the words of
wisdom, Judith, I like to be filled in. And it sounds as if I'd better rest up
all summer.'

Clearly he was torn; avid to make
personal contact with vast numbers of the populace, yet apprehensive about the
vehicle he would be riding and the antics of his chauffeur, Judith Carriol. God,
but it was going to be hard dealing with him! Out of touch with so much of the
outside world because he didn't watch television and he didn't listen to the
radio and he only read the
New York Times
and the
Washington Post
and good or professional books. Yet at one and the same time, he was more
aware of what ailed the populace than any of the possible sources of information
he might have pursued.

Under her eyelids she watched him
closely. There was something new and odd about him, and it gnawed at the roots
of her certainty. A fragility? A fading? Was his self eroding? Garbage! she
assured herself. Imagination. Quite a logical combination of her own insecurity
and his strenuous spring of writing and working. He was not a frail man, he was
a sensitive one. He did not lack strength, he lacked egocentric toughness. And
above all he was a man capable of rising to the occasion when he felt he was
needed, capable under those circumstances of giving everything he had and more
besides.

In the end she stayed to dinner, aware
(and mildly amused by it) that the younger women of Joshua Christian's household
did not regard her so suspiciously this evening as they had on the day she had
first met them. Whatever Mary and Martha and Miriam had sensed in her and her
relationship with their beloved brother apparently was no longer felt to be a
threat. What had they sensed? What had everyone sensed that she had not? Or he
had not, for that matter? How odd, when their contacts with each other had in
actual fact been devoid of personal complications. Dr Carriol left for her
helicopter and Washington with the conundrum unanswered.

'So Judith finished filling in the
picture for me of what is going to happen after the book is released,' Dr
Christian said to his family that night in the living room.

'Well, I presume you'll be asked to do
some kind of publicity tour?' asked Andrew, who had made it his business to
become better informed about the mechanics of publishing since his brother's
venture into literature. He had also taken to watching a few television
programmes and switching on the radio in his office when he had no patients and
no really concentrated work to do.

'Yes. Which pleases me in one way and is
likely to be an embarrassment in others. I've given all of you so much extra
work to do this spring, and now it seems I'll have to take more time off in the
autumn.'

'No sweat,' said Andrew,
smiling.

Mama was very happy. Dearest Joshua was
back in the bosom of his family after a two-month mental absence. How nice to
see him sitting placidly sipping his cognac along with his coffee, instead of
jumping up from the table with his last mouthful of food still unswallowed. She
didn't even feel an urge to sting him into a diatribe.

'Do you think you'd like me to come along
with you?' asked Mary, yearning to go with him. So many years in this little
moribund city of Holloman when there was so much to see outside it! Behind her
passivity and her knowledge that she was neither so bright as Joshua nor so
beautiful as Mama nor so necessary as James and Andrew and Miriam and Martha, a
restless and bitter and frustrated spirit champed; alone among the Christians,
Mary had an urge to travel, to see new places, experience new things. But being
by nature a passive one, she couldn't come out and say what she wanted. She just
lived her sterile life waiting for someone in her family to see it without being
told; what she couldn't understand was that her very neutrality and passivity
made her invisible to all the rest, that she hid her longings too well, and so
no one ever dreamed they existed.

Dr Christian smiled at her, shook his
head emphatically. 'No, of course I don't! I'll be fine on my own.'

Mary said no more, nor let her feelings
show.

'Will you be gone long?' asked the Mouse,
looking down at her feet.

For her, so small and sweet and grey, he
always had a special tenderness; so he gave her that wonderful special smile as
he said gently, 'I don't imagine so, dear Mouse. One or two weeks should do
it'

Her eyes had lifted to drink in this
benediction, eyes huge and wistful, teary-bright.

Andrew got to his feet immediately,
yawning. 'I'm tired! I think I'll go to bed, if you'll excuse me.'

James and Miriam rose too, glad someone
else had suggested bed. Theirs was a good marriage, chiefly because it had
brought an unexpected joy in its wake: wrapped in its sanctity they had
discovered the deliciousness of skin against skin, body against body. And summer
was their time, when they would sport in their bed for hours untrammelled by
nightclothes and bedclothes. Perhaps intellectually Miriam preferred Joshua to James, but certainly in no
other way imaginable.

'Lazy!' said Joshua, getting to his feet.
'I'm going for a walk. Anyone else feel like it?'

Mama jumped up at once and rushed off to
find some comfortable shoes, while the Mouse said in her shy little voice that
she really ought to go with Andrew.

'Nonsense!' said Joshua. 'Come with us.
Mary?'

'No thanks. I'll clear up the
kitchen.'

For several seconds longer Martha
dithered, her eyes travelling between Joshua and Mary, dismayed, apprehensive.
'I won't come, Joshua,' she said in the end. 'I'll give Mary a hand and then I'd
better go to bed.'

Mary looked at Martha a little grimly,
then stretched out her hand and yanked the youngest member of the Christian
family from her chair. It was not a gracious gesture, but as Mary's strong
fingers closed over her own, Martha as always felt that hand plucking her from a
sea of doubt and carrying her to safety.

'Thank you,' she said as they reached the
haven of the kitchen. 'I never do know how to get out of difficult situations.
And I'm sure Mama will want Joshua to herself.'

'You're dead right,' said Mary. She
lifted her hand again, this time to tuck back behind one ear an erring strand of
fine dun hair. So like a mouse's coat! 'My poor little Mouse,' she said. 'But
cheer up. You're not the only one who's trapped.'

Mama and Joshua paced steadily through
the still and tranquil night, arms linked, a feat he managed in spite of the
difference in their heights by cuddling his mother's shoulder rather than her
elbow.

'I'm glad Lucy's gone and you're free of
the book,' was her opening gambit.

'So am I, by God!' he said with great
feeling.

'Are you happy, Joshua?'

When anyone else asked him that question
he fenced, but Mama and he had been joint
heads of the family for nearly thirty years, and on his side the bond between
them was a mature one.

'Yes and no,' he said. 'I can see so many
possibilities opening up, opportunities I really do welcome. That makes me
happy. And yet I can also see problems. I'm a bit afraid, I suppose. Therefore
I'm unhappy.'

It will work itself out.'

'Nothing surer!'

'It's what you've always wanted to do.
Oh, not write a book and become a famous man! I mean get yourself into a
position where you can help a great many people. Judith is an amazing woman, you
know. I would never have thought of a book, not knowing your difficulties with
the written word.'

'Nor would I.' He guided her across Route
78 and into the park. Enormous moths bumbled around the infrequent lights, the
leafy trees sighed in a faint breeze, some unknown flower's perfume trailed
elusively around the nostrils, and everywhere the inhabitants of Holloman walked
the short summer night of the short summer. 'You know, Mama,' he went on, 'I
think that's what frightens me most of all. This afternoon I found myself
thinking of Judith as the genie of my own personal Aladdin's lamp. I wish, and
out she pops with all the answers.'

'No! How could that be? It was chance,
Joshua. If you hadn't gone to Hartford to sit in on that Marcus trial, you and
she would never have met. But you did go to Hartford, and you did meet her.
She's terribly important, isn't she?'

'Oh, yes.'

'Well, there you are! She sees and knows
so much we couldn't, living here in Holloman as we do. And she must know all the
right people.' 'Indeed she does.' 'So doesn't it make sense?'

'It should. But it doesn't. There's
something,
Mama! I voice a wish, and she makes it come true.'

'Then next time you see her, if that's
before I do, would you ask her to grant me just one wish?'

He stopped beneath a light to look down
at her. 'You? What do you want you can't have?'

Her beautiful face laughed up at him,
more beautiful because it laughed. 'I want you and Judith.'