The Man in the Moss (50 page)

           
Macbeth said nothing. He hadn't come here for this. Had
he?

           
'Sorry to be so blunt,' the Duchess said.

           
'No problem,' Macbeth said hollowly.
           
'This is your job perhaps.
People think you can open doors?'

           
'Do they just,' said Macbeth.

           
'Now you've woken up, and you're thinking, am I to spend
my life ... serving up the, er, goods ... ? As a form of restitution? Paying
back, even though I might be paying back to people who never gave me anything,
or do I go out on my own, chance my arm ... ?'

           
There were subtle alterations in her voice. Macbeth felt
goose-bumps forming.

           
The Duchess said, 'is there something more out there than
piling up money? Even if that money's not all for me, even if it's helping the
economy and therefore other people who might need the money more than me? Are
there ... more things in heaven and earth than you get to read about in the
New York Times?'

           
Christ. He was listening to himself. By the time she sat
back to sip more tea, he'd swear the Duchess had developed a significantly
deeper voice and an accent not unlike his own.

           
Ah, this is just a sophisticated act. This is a classy
stage routine.

           
'No it isn't,' the Duchess said crisply.

           
He almost dropped his cup. 'What... ?' His hand shook.

           
'No, it isn't ... going to rain,' the Duchess said
sweetly. 'Although it was forecast. But then forecasts are seldom reliable,
I've found.'

He guessed she'd never been
to college. He guessed she hadn't always talked so refined. He guessed her
life-story would make more than one mini-series.

           
Then he guessed he'd better start keeping a tighter hold
on his thoughts until he was someplace else.

           
'I'm not a fortune-teller, you know,' she said, like some
women would say, what do you think I am, a
hooker
?

           
'I, uh ... Moira never said you were,' Macbeth said
uncomfortably.

           
'I appear to be able to do it. Sometimes. But I don't
make a practice of it.' She poured herself more tea. 'So why did I let you in
here?'

           
Macbeth didn't know.

           
'Because I'm worried about the child,' she said. 'That's
why.'

           
He said, 'I can understand that.'
           
'Can you?'

           
'I'm, uh, a Celt,' he said, and she started to laugh, a
sound like the little teaspoon tinkling on the bone china.

           
'To be Celtic,' she said, 'is more an attitude than a
racial thing. Like to be a gypsy is a way of life.'

           
'What about to be a psychic?'

           
Her face clouded. 'That,' she said, 'is a cross to bear.
She'll tell you that herself. It's to accept there's a huge part of your life
that will never be your own. It's to realise there are always going to be
obligations to fulfil, directions you have to go in, even though you can't always
see the sense of it.'

           
'That's what she's doing right now?'

           
The Duchess nodded. 'She has things to work out. Oh, I
don't know what she's doing and I wouldn't dream of interfering, she's a mature
person. But I am her mother, and mothers
are
always inclined to worry, so I'm told. I was only thinking - coincidence - just
before you arrived, I wish she had someone who cared for her. But she's a
loner. We all are, I fear. We learn our lesson. We don't like other people to
get hurt.'
           
'You're saying you think Moira
needs someone with her?'
           
The Duchess shrugged her
elegant shoulders. 'Someone looking out for her, maybe. When Donald told me
there was a man at the gate asking after Moira, I wondered if perhaps ...'

           
Then she gave him the kind of smile that was like a
consolatory pat on the arm. 'I don't really feel you're the one, Mr Macbeth.'

           
Sometimes, when he interviewed would-be film-directors,
there was one nice, bright-eyed kid he could tell was never going to make it.
And trying to let the kid down easy he'd always start out, 'I don't really feel
...'

           
'Look, Duchess ...' Macbeth felt like he was about to
cry. This was absurd. He started to tell her about the night at the Earl's
Castle, about Moira singing 'The Comb Song', and how it ended.

           
'Yes,' the Duchess said impatiently, 'I know about that.'

           
'So am I right in thinking Moira caused all that, the
deer heads and stuff to come crashing down?'

           
The Duchess looked cross. 'The question is ... pouff!
Irrelevant! How can anyone ever really say, I did this, I caused this to
happen? Perhaps you are a factor in its happening, perhaps not. I'll tell you
something, Mr Macbeth ... nobody who's merely human can ever be entirely sure
of the ability to make
anything
happen. Say, if you're a great healer, sometimes it works ... you're lucky, or
you're so good and saintly that you get helped a lot. And sometimes it doesn't
work at all. I once knew a woman called Jean Wendle ... but that's another
story ...'

           
She lay back on the chaise and half-closed her eyes,
looking at the wall behind him. 'Or, let us say, if you're a bad or a vengeful
person, and you want to hurt somebody, you want to curse them ... in the
movies, it goes ...
zap
, like one of
those, what d'you call them ... ray guns, lasers.'

           
He heard a small noise behind him, turned in time to see
a plate, one of a row of five with pictures on them, sliding very slowly from
the wall.

           
The plate fell to the floor and smashed. Macbeth nearly
passed out.

           
From a long way away, he heard the Duchess saying, 'Doing
damage, harming people is much easier but that's unpredictable too. Sometimes
people dabble and create a big black cloud ...' Throwing up her arms
theatrically,'... and they can't control
where
it goes.'

           
Numbly, Macbeth bent to pick up the pieces of the plate.
Maybe he'd dislodged it with the back of his head. The ones still on the wall
had pictures of Balmoral Castle, where the Queen spent time, and Glamis Castle,
Blair Atholl Castle and the Queen Mother's Castle of Mey.

           
He held two pieces of the broken plate together and saw,
in one of those shattering, timeless moments, that they made up a rough
watercolour sketch of the familiar Victorian Gothic facade of the Earl's place.

           
'Accidents happen,' the Duchess said. 'Leave it on the
floor.'

           
Macbeth's fingers were trembling as he laid the pieces
down. He needed a cigarette more urgently than at any time since he quit
smoking six years ago.

           
'I never liked that one anyway,' the Duchess said.

           
Doubtless psyching out that Macbeth could use more hot
tea, and fast, she filled up his cup and added two sugars.

           
He drank it all. She was offering him an easy way out.
She was saying, what just happened - the plate - also, the skulls on the wall
... this is kids' stuff ... this is chickenshit compared to what a person could
be letting himself in for if he pursues Moira Cairns.

           
Mungo Macbeth, maker of mini-series for the masses,
thought maybe this was how King Arthur laid it on the line for any mad-assed
knight of the Round Table figuring to go after the Holy Grail.

           
He'd often wondered about those less ambitious knights
who listened to the horror stories and thought, Well, fuck this, what do 1 need
with a Holy Grail? Maybe I should just stick around and lay me some more
damsels, do a little Sunday jousting. How could those knights go on living with
themselves, having passed up on the chance of the One Big Thing?

           
He said, 'Earlier, you said ... about when a guy gets to
wondering how much his life has really been worth and if there isn't more stuff
in Heaven and Earth than he's reading about in the
New York Times
...'

           
The silent girl who'd brought the tea came back and took
away the tray.

           
After she'd gone, he said, 'Duchess, why? I only met your
daughter once, never even ... Why? Can you tell me?'

           
Instead, the Duchess told him the story of a man who fell
in love with the Queen of the Fairies and all the shit that put him into.
Macbeth said he knew the songs. Tarn Lin, Thomas The Rymer, all that stuff? But
that wasn't the same thing, surely, Moira Cairns was a human being.

           
'That's quite true,' the Duchess said gravely. 'But
remember this. Wherever she goes, that young woman ... she's bound to be
touched with madness. Now, who is the white man?'

           
'White man?'

           
'I thought perhaps you might be his emissary ...
White-skinned man? I don't think I mean race. Just a man
exuding
a whiteness?'

           
'Somebody
I
know?'
           
'You don't?'

           
'I don't know what you mean.'
           
'I believe you don't. All
right. Never mind.'
           
Macbeth asked, 'Do you know
where Moira is?'
           
'Oh ... the little Jewish person,
Kaufmann, tells me she's in the North of England.'
           
'Bastard wouldn't tell
me.'

           
'You he doesn't trust. Strange, that - I find you quite
transparent.'
           
'Thanks.'

           
'There was a man called ... Matt?'
           
'Jesus, you intuited that?'

           
The Duchess sighed in exasperation. 'She told me.'

           
'Right,' Macbeth said, relieved. 'Matt, uh ...'

           
'Castle. She thinks he was her mentor. I rather suspect
she was his.'

           
'Right,' Macbeth said uncertainly.

           
'He's dead. She'll have gone to try and lay his spirit to
rest.'

           
Macbeth squirmed a little. Was this precisely what was
meant by things you couldn't find in the
New
York Times
? Was this what Mom meant about uncovering his roots? He thought
not.

           
The Duchess smiled kindly. 'You can leave now, if you
wish, Mr Macbeth. I'll have Donald see you to the gate.'

           
'No, wait ...' Two trains of thought were about to crash,
buckling his usual A to B mental tracks. 'This, uh, white person ...'

           
'A thin man with white hair and a very white complexion.'
           
The Castle. The bones.
White-faced man with a cut eye.
           
'Shit, I don't believe this
... you got that outa my head. You pulled it clean outa my head.'

           
'Mr Macbeth, calm down. Two or three weeks ago, a man of
this description came to consult me. As people do ... occasionally. He didn't
get in. Donald is my first line of defence, the dogs are the second, and Donald
told me the dogs disliked this man quite
intensely
.
On sight. Now ... dogs can't
invariably
be trusted, they may react badly to - oh - psychic disturbance in a person, or
mental instability. But when a man arrives in an expensive car and seems very
confident and the dogs hate him on sight...'

           
Stanhope, Macbeth thought. Stansgate?

           
'And when Donald conveyed my message that I was unwell,
he was apparently quite annoyed. He sent a message back that he had information
about my daughter which he thought I would wish to know. I suggested Donald
should let the dogs have him.'

           
'What happened?'
           
'He left.'

           
Stanley? Stanmore? 'Duchess, you think this guy meant her
harm?'

           
'Two people arrive within a short period to talk to me
about my daughter. One the dogs dislike. How did the dogs take to you, Mr
Macbeth?'