he bore a natural air of authority.
“Geraldine. You’ve grown since I last saw you.” His handshake was firm and cold. Jerry smiled back and met his eye. This was the man who had once thought of her as a daughter? It was like meeting a stranger. He was deeply tanned, almost as if he was wearing stage make-up. There was an absolute stillness in his face that quickly became unnerving. Charles approached her father and welcomed him. “Jack, I’m sorry we’ve seen so little of each other. I’ve been meeting with investors, trying to calm their nerves. Liverpool is not to be recommended in the winter.”
He seated himself in one of the cane chairs. “Well, young lady, you’ve blazed quite a trail since we last met.” For a moment, Jerry feared her real motive in coming here had been discovered. “Let’s see – you dropped out of school and embarrassed your parents. You made yourself ill, took a spell in care, indulged yourself at the expense of those who clothed and fed you. You’ve been acting like a child for long enough.” Charles pressed a brass buzzer on his desk. “You’ll soon be eighteen, but why should I assume you’re ready to start behaving like a responsible adult?”
The maid appeared in the doorway, and Charles gestured to her. Jerry shifted uncomfortably on her chair.
“I appreciate your honesty, Mr Whitstable. I know only what I read about your family in the papers, so you have the advantage over me. My parents have long wanted to find me employment in family business.” She couldn’t resist a glance at Jack. “Father thinks that I can be of use to you, and I’m willing to learn.”
“You have no plans for university, Geraldine. You haven’t had a guild apprenticeship. What makes you assume you could handle our kind of managerial training?”
“Enterprise is served by individuality, not conformity. That rather makes me a Whitstable in spirit, if not in name.” She had cribbed that part from the CROWET brochure.
Charles Whitstable rose and walked to the floorlength windows that overlooked the estate’s misty grounds. “I need someone I can trust. There aren’t many younger members of our family left. Too few children.”
“I understand. You need someone with new ideas.”
“Exactly.” Charles turned from the window. “Jack, I think you can leave the two of us to chat for a while.”
“I should stay with Jerry,” said her father, half rising in his seat. In that fleeting moment, she saw the discomfort in his eyes. He was afraid of Charles. But why?
“That won’t be necessary. Come on, Jack, it’s Christmas Day. You should be with your wife. Jerry can stay for dinner and keep me company.”
“But there’s no public transport today…” Jack began.
“Then she can stay over. I’ll have one of the rooms aired. You can collect her in the morning.”
Even though they had yet to discuss her terms of employment, Jerry knew that she had been accepted into the poisoned embrace of the Whitstable family.
¦
Maggie Armitage lit a joss stick and set it in the nosehole of an African spirit head. “That’s better,” she said. “Get rid of the smell of damp in here.” They were standing in her front room above the World’s End pub, opposite Camden Town Tube station. The streets outside were as bright and empty as an abandoned film set. The windows of the flat were misted with condensation. Water dripped steadily through a black patch on the ceiling. A few faded postwar paper chains had been strung between the corners in a desultory attempt to usher in some Christmas cheer.
Maggie was only a little over five feet tall, but what the white witch lacked in height she made up for in vivacity. All problems, national, local, or personal, were dealt with in the same brisk, friendly manner. For all the complexity of her personal belief system she was a practical woman, and it was this streak of sound sense that had kept the Coven of St James the Elder alive at a time when so many other branches were shutting up shop.
With their ranks now swollen to include a number of part-time honorary members, meetings took place in the flat every Monday evening, and were concluded rather more raucously in the pub downstairs. Much of the coven’s work was of a mundane nature – inter-coven correspondence was dealt with, and a mimeographed newsletter was produced. Public queries had to be answered, a forum for the discussion of world events was chaired, and new excuses were invented for avoiding eviction notices.
“You’ve managed to hang on to this place, then.”
Bryant warily eyed the saturated ceiling.
“The landlord’s been trying to sling us out for years, but his heart isn’t in it any more,” said Maggie. “Especially since Doris put an evil enchantment on his car.”
“I thought you didn’t do that sort of thing.”
“Well,” she confided, “we don’t as a rule, but he was being a real pain in the arse.”
“Did it work?”
“I think so. Whenever he comes around to collect the rent he’s always half an hour late and his hands are covered in oil. Would you like one of my special Christmas cups of tea?”
“I don’t know,” said Bryant, narrowing his eyes at her.
“Is it full of strange herbs and aromatic spices?”
“No, Earl Grey with a shot of brandy.”
“Oh, that’s all right then.” He shifted a stack of magazines and seated himself. “Where’s everyone else?”
“We finished early with just a few madrigals because Maureen’s cooking her family Christmas dinner, which she’s against in principle, being a practising pagan. The others have gone downstairs to the pub. They’re busy arguing about the origins of Yggdrasil, the cosmic axis. Things can get quite heated.”
“I’m afraid I’m not familiar – ” Bryant began. “Well, you should be!” said Maggie, pouring a generous measure of Calvados into his cup. “It’s why we put presents under the Christmas tree. Yggdrasil is the eternal tree of Northern belief, the great natural core that links our world to heaven and hell. Decking the tree is an act which symbolically brings us the gifts of wisdom. And strangely enough, it has something to do with your investigation.”
Bryant couldn’t wait to hear this one. Maggie crossed the room, nimbly skirting a pair of buckets collecting rainwater, and removed a large volume from one of the overflowing bookcases. “I’ve been delving into your dilemma, and I believe I’ve come up with something.”
She set the book down on the table before her. “This is an album of Christmas beliefs, printed in Scandinavia at the end of the nineteenth century. After our last meeting I started thinking about your Mr Whitstable and his Stewards of Heaven. I couldn’t see what had inspired him to form this kind of society, although it didn’t surprise me one bit that he had.”
“It didn’t?”
“Oh, no. You have to imagine the Victorian empirebuilders as they were. Champions of industry, taming the savages, spreading the word. How grand they must have thought themselves! How godlike! People like James Whitstable saw themselves as superior human beings, educated, enlightened, and powerful. They wanted to separate themselves from the rabble, to have their worth acknowledged by their peers. And they sought methods of spiritual improvement. Sometimes, however, they got sidetracked into bad habits. These days one tends to dismiss the Victorian age as a time of mindless imperialism.
It comes as rather a shock to recall that the youthful Queen Victoria envisaged a new era of democracy, tolerance, and freedom for all. Things turned out differently due to the rigours of the class system, and because men like Whitstable put themselves above the common herd.
Power is about access, and private societies are designed to exclude.”
She opened the book at its mark and revealed a pair of graceful watercolour drawings. One was a traditional evocation of Saint Nicholas with his reindeer. The other was a representation of the god Odin, astride an eight- legged creature with horns. Both looked very similar.
The distance between these two mythical icons was far less than Bryant had realized.
“I felt it was significant that Whitstable saw himself as Och, the Bringer of Light. The group photograph reminded me of something, but I couldn’t think what it was. Then I remembered. The room in which the seven men were standing was decorated for Christmas. You could see holly lining the mantelpiece. Now, Christmas is a unique festival, originally celebrating not the birth of Christ but the rebirth of light following winter’s shortest, darkest day.
