Mirrorman Read online

  And indeed it was.

  She and Daniella were escorted to a luxury VIP viewing suite where they watched the transmission of The Lovebeams Show. It was the confessional format called ‘My Secret Sin’ this evening – one of Daniella’s favourites – with Messiah Wilde roaming around with a hand mike, firing questions at the row of people on the stage and asking members of the audience for their comments and opinions. As the camera framed each of the participants, a caption appeared on the screen to explain the sins they were confessing to: LIED TO PARENTS, CHEATED ON HER HUSBAND, BEAT HIS WIFE, ABUSED SMALL CHILDREN, HAD LEWD THOUGHTS, USED TO MASTURBATE, KILLED KITTENS FOR FUN. Sarah was glad that her daughter liked to watch ‘My Secret Sin’, because it combined entertainment with education and spiritual uplift. The point of it was not to hold anything back, but by openly confessing the deepest, darkest secrets to purge the soul and set an example for others of how sinners could be brought to the light.

  Sarah was very moved by it. There was a lot of evil in the world, masked by self-denial and hypocrisy, and it did the heart good to see these people baring their hidden desires and lustful yearnings in public.

  Afterward they were shown through to the hospitality suite, where a buffet supper was laid out for the participants in ‘My Secret Sin’. The room gradually filled up and was soon buzzing with lively conversation and the shrill, fragile laughter of released tension. Many of the senior staff were there, and a tall, tanned, athletic young woman with the Beamers’ crest on the breast pocket of her crisp white blouse, who had taken on the role of chaperone, made the introductions. It transpired that Sarah was quite a celebrity in her own right. Many of the people she spoke to were regular and enthusiastic listeners to Take Five. One man, whose name she didn’t catch in the bewildering flurry of names, faces, handshakes and compliments, told her that the mental image he had formed from the sound of her voice, picturing her as a beautiful and intelligent mature woman, fell far short of the living reality. She had missed her way in not taking up a career in television. Sarah blushed like a schoolgirl. He went on to say how delighted he was that she had consented to appear on the show with Messiah Wilde.

  ‘His appeal, of course, is to our female audience. We have our chorus line, as I like to call it,’ he joked, ‘which works very well for, let us say, decorative purposes, but we need more than that: strong physical attraction combined with a penetrating mind and an eloquent turn of phrase. Qualities you possess in abundance, Mrs Cawdor.’

  ‘I’m very flattered,’ Sarah said. It sounded as if he was offering her a permanent job.

  ‘Your husband is a lucky man to have such a talented wife.’

  ‘I wish he thought so,’ Sarah said miserably.

  ‘Oh? You mean he doesn’t approve of the work you do?’

  ‘He actually disapproves. He’s one of those, I’m afraid, who has yet to receive the Message. I hope and pray one day he will.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ the man said sombrely, his rumbling bass voice reminding Sarah of the tolling of a bell in some chamber deep undergound. He reached out and touched her shoulder comfortingly, and she felt briefly the bony grip of his long fingers. When his tall thin figure moved off into the crush of people she was left with an impression of quiet charm, sincerity, and wisdom.

  Sarah looked round for Daniella and almost fainted on the spot. She was standing over by the bar with a group of the ‘My Secret Sin’ participants, a dreamy, almost dazed, expression on her pallid face as she gazed up into the dark soulful eyes of Messiah Wilde. A shaft of something very near to jealousy pierced Sarah. Her daughter was along for the ride, not to become the focus of his undivided attention. The sharp pain soon passed and was altogether forgotten when she was taken over to be introduced. The first meeting, shaking his hand, smiling up at him, answering his questions, seemed to go by in a blur. In a curious way she didn’t feel to be part of herself. It was as if an actress was standing in for her, playing the role of Sarah Cawdor for the evening, mouthing her lines.

  Probably the shock, she realised, of being in the living, breathing presence of Messiah Wilde Himself. Enough to make any warm-blooded woman feel to be lost and adrift in a world of fantastic unreality. There was a sensual aura about him that excited her; she couldn’t deny it. She was aware of a hot dampness between her legs, and her breasts seemed confined inside the fitted jacket of her linen suit. She watched his lips as he chatted with the group, hardly able to take in the sense of what he was saying. He was pleasant and courteous to everyone, with an English reserve she found captivating. Submerged beneath his refined accent she thought she detected the faintest trace of a gentle Irish lilt, which surprised her. Once again a feeling of giddy unreality swept over Sarah: the here and now of being within touching distance of him, of breathing the same air.

  There was a greater shock in store. And then it really did seem as if her life had been transformed into magical make-believe.

  Looking into her eyes, so that Sarah felt to be drowning in the depths of his, Messiah Wilde invited her and Daniella to be his guests in his Palm Beach house.

  7

  ‘How far back into the past?’

  ‘How far back do you want to go? Four hundred years? Five? Six? These guys have been around quite a while.’ Annie Lorentz sorted through the clippings, photostats and printouts spread out on the desk in Doctor Khuman’s study. She found what she was looking for. ‘This is the earliest reference I came up with. 1292. There’s an engraving, so you can see what they looked like at that period.’

  ‘Where’s this from?’

  ‘The Codex. Forbidden access to the great unwashed for centuries. The name Cawdor mentioned – the Shouters – was in use during the eighteenth century, though they’ve had dozens of names. Their proper name, if you can call it that, is the Messengers of the Fall from Grace.’

  ‘A religious sect, obviously,’ Doctor Khuman said.

  ‘Sounds like it,’ Annie Lorentz agreed, ‘though it’s hard to say exactly what they were – or still are, for all we know. Five elders ran the show. They always took the names Graye, Whyte, Greene, Browne, and Blacke.’

  ‘Colourful bunch, if not very original,’ Doctor Khuman observed.

  ‘Some of their rituals were quasi-religious, but they seem to have dabbled in just about everything else as well. During the Middle Ages they were court advisers to the British monarchy. They were in Italy when the Medicis were coming into prominence, mid-fourteenth century; and in France round about the time of the Revolution. Further back still –’ she rooted through the results of her research ‘– you find them popping up all over the place, but always on the sidelines, never centrestage. Greece, the Ottoman Empire, the Balkans, Russia…’

  ‘All of which had revolutions and holy wars,’ Doctor Khuman said.

  ‘So have most places at one time or another, Satish,’ Annie Lorentz pointed out. ‘What are you searching for – a conspiracy theory? The Messengers of the Fall from Grace as perverters of the course of history?’

  ‘When sects or groups perpetuate themselves for hundreds of years, Annie, they have powerful interests to protect. They wish to impose their influence on the right people in the right places. And their name, of course; no ambiguity there.’

  ‘Guess not, Satish. Whose grace did they fall from, you reckon? God’s?’

  Doctor Khuman gave her a steely stare. You could never tell with Annie if she was being serious or whether her sarcasm was on the prowl.

  ‘Any trace of them recently?’ he asked.

  ‘I did a quick check on all the religious groups, but there are hundreds of them, any of which could be the Messengers in disguise.’

  ‘Well, not quite any,’ Doctor Khuman objected. ‘Unless the Pope is called Graye.’ Leaning back in the chair, he took off his glasses and massaged his eyelids with long, slender fingers. Annie Lorentz sat on the corner of the desk, swinging her leg in its shapeless cord, watching the bowed head. He was a curious mixture, Doctor Khuman. She had never
truly fathomed him. Part medical scientist, part faith healer, part Jungian psychotherapist. Not forgetting his early days as one of the pioneers in prosthetic surgery.

  He looked up, blinking slowly. ‘Mystics and madmen…’

  ‘What’s that, Satish?’

  ‘Something I remember from the work of RD Laing. You know of him?’ Annie Lorentz shook her head. ‘A Scottish psychologist. He wrote somewhere, “Mystics and schizophrenics find themselves in the same ocean, but the mystics swim whereas the schizophrenics drown.” We’re all of us adrift in the same ocean, according to Laing, and those at the furthest extremes of perception – the mystics and madmen – possess insights denied the rest of us.’

  ‘And which one is Cawdor?’

  ‘I only wish I knew.’ Doctor Khuman rubbed his pointed chin. ‘You see, Annie, I’m afraid that if I push him too hard, and too fast, we might never learn of the journey he’s on. And if I don’t push hard enough he might never learn of it himself’

  ‘What journey?’ Annie Lorentz said. She slid off the desk and ambled over to the window. ‘From the past to the future? We’ve all of us got a one-way ticket for that trip, too.’ She looked through the Venetian blind, narrowing her eyes from the glare. Cawdor sat on the sunlit terrace below, gazing towards the hills and the river. He hadn’t moved in the hour since she arrived, shortly after midday.

  ‘But that is precisely my point,’ Doctor Khuman said. ‘Cawdor’s trip is circular. He has a return ticket.’

  ‘I don’t believe in time travel,’ Annie Lorentz stated flatly. ‘It’s one big paradox. Say you go back and murder your own grandfather. You’d never have been born and wouldn’t exist in the present. But, if you didn’t exist in the present, you couldn’t have gone back to murder your grandfather, and therefore you would have been born. So – having been born, you could go back and murder your grandfather, but if you did murder him…’

  Annie Lorentz turned to him, cross-eyed, and Doctor Khuman grinned at the tortured expression on her face.

  ‘Ever experience a coincidence, Annie?’

  ‘Sure.’ She shrugged. ‘Who hasn’t?’

  ‘Yes, we dismiss them, don’t we, as being of no importance. But on a deeper, intuitive level they may be very important, giving us a glimpse of a different level of reality. In fact, we dismiss our intuition far too lightly,’ Doctor Khuman said, the thin beams of sunlight flashing on his glasses as he rose to join her at the window. ‘Not so the Buddhists. They have as much faith in our intuitive powers as in our reasoning intelligence. Actually, they rely more on intuition than on reason to guide them. They believe it gives them a glimpse of the underlying reality of which this –’ he wafted the air, indicating the desk with its spread of papers, the cluttered bookshelves, the shadowy corners of the room ‘– is only the surface, the superficial outer shell.’

  ‘That why Cawdor interests you so much? You think he might be getting these “glimpses” which are denied the rest of us?’

  ‘I believe so,’ Doctor Khuman said devoutly.

  Annie Lorentz peeked through the blind. ‘Gotta say, Satish, he looks ordinary enough to me. What did you mean, that if you pushed him too hard too fast we might never learn anything?’

  Doctor Khuman was silent for a moment, brooding. ‘I have to somehow force these memories out, or they may he buried for ever. But if I do it too quickly, or in the wrong way..

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mystics and madmen,’ Doctor Khuman said – and this time Annie Lorentz understood.

  ‘Is there a risk?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is he aware of it?’

  ‘No. That is, I don’t think so.’

  ‘I’m glad I’m not in your shoes, Satish.’ Annie Lorentz gave him a piercing ice-blue stare. She looked again through the blind at the motionless figure on the sunlit terrace, sitting now with his eyes closed. ‘Or Jeff Cawdor’s, come to that.’

  ‘Ready for some lunch? Annie Lorentz is here – she’ll be joining us.’

  A smiling Doctor Khuman appeared on the terrace. He had changed from his white coat into a lightweight green cotton jacket that came complete with wrinkled folds and sagging pockets. He frowned as Cawdor got to his feet, seeing him flexing and rubbing his left hand. ‘Everything all right, Jeff? What’s wrong with your hand?’

  ‘Nothing. Gone to sleep, I guess.’ Cawdor looked around, breathing in deeply. ‘This is a wonderful setting. You choose the location for its therapeutic value?’

  ‘No, no, this isn’t a clinic and I’m not a doctor of medicine.’

  ‘What are you a doctor of?’

  ‘Well, my doctorate is in the field of psychoanalytical research, Jungian branch. But I have dabbled, and still do, in many other areas of inquiry.’ He bent down to pick up the paperback lying next to the chair. ‘Don’t forget this.’

  Cawdor accepted the book. ‘This being one of them?’ he asked, studying the cover.

  ‘Not only Buddhism. All religions, cults and beliefs interest me greatly,’ Doctor Khuman said, extending his hand to usher Cawdor towards the house. ‘The search for spiritual truth and enlightenment is mankind’s oldest aspiration. It seeks to answer the eternal questions of who we are, why we’re here, and what is our place in the grand scheme of things. Those are the only questions really worth asking, don’t you agree?’

  ‘And you think I’m gonna be much help to you?’ Cawdor asked sardonically.

  ‘First, Jeff,’ Doctor Khuman said, putting his hand on Cawdor’s shoulder as they walked along the terrace, ‘I want very much to help you. If I learn something in the process, well and good, I shall be grateful. But let us deal first with the most important thing, which is to seek answers to your questions. The eternal questions will have to wait a bit longer.’

  ‘This’ll take more than one afternoon, by the sound of it.’

  ‘Slightly more,’ Doctor Khuman agreed with the twinkle of a smile.

  ‘Just that I’d better leave a message at my office,’ Cawdor said, entering the house through a stone portal with a pointed arch. Today was Saturday. He hadn’t given much thought to how long he might be away, just assumed he’d be back in time for work Monday morning. ‘I didn’t tell my partner I was taking a trip. What do I tell him – get back Tuesday or Wednesday?’

  Doctor Khuman nodded. ‘Three or four days should be sufficient,’ he said, his voice hollow and echoing in the tiled passageway, ‘for us at least to make a start.’

  Before they went into lunch, Doctor Khuman asked Cawdor if he’d care to freshen up first. They were standing in the large hallway, huge embroidered draperies with tasselled fringes hanging on the grey stone walls, the ornate plaster ceiling eighty feet above supported by arched wooden beams on granite pediments. The rambling house was a curious composite of styles and periods: old English baronial and East European Byzantine with a dash of medieval gothic thrown in for good measure. ‘The dining room is along here, the door at the far end,’ Doctor Khuman said, pointing down a long gloomy corridor. ‘Come through as soon as you’re ready. Annie and I will be waiting.’

  Cawdor went up the wide, curved stone staircase to the second floor; that morning, before coming down, he’d had to memorise where his room was located to be certain of finding it again.

  He hadn’t brought much with him. It had taken less than ten minutes to stuff a change of clothing, toiletry articles, and a few bits and pieces into the leather valise he used as an overnight bag. Mrs Brandt, or another member of the staff, had been in, he saw, and made the bed and tidied up. He took a folded shirt from the valise, shook it loose, and laid it on the bed. Deciding to have a quick wash and change into it, he wondered whether it was sitting on the terrace in the sunshine that had made him hot and sticky, or more likely the crawling panic fear that had gripped him like a fever. But he’d gotten over that, Cawdor thought with relief, unbuttoning his shirt as he went into the bathroom. It was wise to nip these weird fancies in the bud before they went haywire and took over.


  Three times the size of the one at home, the bathroom contained a porcelain washbasin with elaborate brass faucets and a cast-iron tub a giant could have bathed in, with wrought-iron feet in the form of lions’ paws. A single large sash window admitted the northern light, and the chessboard floor of two-feet-square black and white tiles added to the chill austerity. Everything was sanitised and spotless; everything, that is, except for the glittering fragments of mirror scattered next to the moulded pedestal of the washbasin.

  Cawdor halted as if the empty space in front of him had instantly materialised into a solid wall. He stood there, his unbuttoned shirt hanging down, the sticky perspiration on his chest turning cold as ice.

  His shaving mirror – this shaving mirror – had been broken once before. He could see it now, lying in pieces on the floor of his own bathroom back home in Franklin. The morning after, however, the unbroken mirror was still there on its shelf. It had been a bizarre dream, or so he had told himself then; yet, immediately afterward, everything began to go wrong: with Phyllis, his wife and daughter, his premonitions of some terrible disaster.

  For the second time the mirror was broken – its circular chrome frame with a few fractured pieces clinging to the inside rim among the debris. But earlier that morning it had been intact. He had stood here in this bathroom, using the magnifying face to shave with.

  Dreading what he might find, Cawdor forced himself to kneel on the black and white tiles. From somewhere, the fragments were catching and reflecting images of light and colour and movement. With trembling fingers he picked up one of the pieces, scimitar-shaped, and stared through his own ghostlike reflection into the world beyond the mirror. The images shimmered and dissolved into one another, and then separated again – and the shock hit him that he was seeing his dreams reflected there. He picked up another piece, and another, and saw within each fragment the same shifting, shimmering world, each fragment containing the whole.