The Pitcairn Perspectives by Philip Spires - HTML preview

Family discussion

 

I have decided to record Edward and Gemma Pitcairn’s crucial discussion as a narrative with commentary. Though we are used to such form - after all it is the basis of most fiction - we must bear in mind when reading such a text that, although the reported words of Edward and Gemma are verbatim, the commentary remains a third-party interpretation. In places this observer’s commentary must intrude to become the content, itself. Throughout the following, however, the separation of the dialogue from the commentary must remain a constant activity for the reader. The dialogue’s participants, of course, are speaking their minds, but the commentary is wholly my perspective. The reader is encouraged at any stage to disassemble the presented elements in order to create his or her own interpretation.

It was a Thursday morning, a full two days after Edward Pitcairn’s appointment with his doctor. Gemma had planned several days working from home, as had become her habit during the pandemic, time when she generally worked for ten hours or more each day at her computer creating online teaching materials for future use in the university. She had hoped that Edward might talk with her on the Wednesday, the day after his consultation. Edward, however, had declared that previous morning that he wanted to work all day and had stayed in his room. He had eaten nothing all day, taking only water from the bathroom on the floor below his top floor room. On the Thursday, Gemma had begun the day by taking her father a breakfast of soup noodles, topped with chopped fresh green chillies she had specially bought from the deli on Upper Street the evening before. At six-thirty, she had found him already awake, showered, dressed and at his desk, working, she presumed, on a paper.

“I brought you breakfast, dad.” He nodded his thanks, looking up with an almost embarrassed glance. “You are working too hard… You shouldn’t…”

“I need to finish this,” he said. “It’s the first thing of any substance I have put together for some time. I seem to have spent the last decade shifting dirt with a toothbrush, so much so that I have forgotten how to write. And what about my quarantine? You have come into the room…”

“Screw the quarantine. It’s been nearly a week. And you already blew that by doing a walkabout after your appointment.”

Gemma paused and then decided she had to act. “We should talk this morning. Have your breakfast and then...”

“I’ll come down. I need to get out of this room, if it’s all right with you. I assume you’re going to be in the study?” His daughter nodded. He caught the smell of the chillies. “Wow! Now you’re talking!”

Some weeks before, Gemma had undertaken the task of transferring her entire second year course on Culture, Media and Politics into a series of electronic resources. This had involved her in several extended video projects, where her intention was to record all of her planned sequence of eight lectures, which would then be uploaded for student access. On starting the project, however, Gemma had realised that her text could also do with an update, so she had embarked upon a literature review, which had meant accessing hundreds of recently published academic journal papers, four or five on each point her lecture might present. Online access to the university library had been a godsend, if she could have brought herself to use such a word, but everything had to read on screen, which she found tiring. The exercise had thus turned into a mammoth research project. After several weeks of intense work, after having accessed the Jstor journal archive for upwards of five hours a day, she still had not yet completed half of her original task.

To assist, Elsie, with Geoff’s help, had adapted the basement study that her mother had used for years into a blacked-out video production studio, complete with curtains and screens to reduce the sound reverberation of the space effectively to zero. On re-entering her workspace, Gemma mumbled to herself that the adaptation might have been a tad premature. The recording studio was utterly necessary for the actual video recording but, during the rest of her working time, the vast majority in fact, she was effectively living in total darkness, save for a spotlight over her keyboard. It was a practice that, alongside the restricted movement and limited social contact imposed by Covid lockdowns had intensified her feelings of isolation. Life seemed to have become something of a dedicated absurdity, a constant labour on behalf of people she could not meet, a constant analysis of a world outside, interaction with which was denied her

The fact that Gemma and Edward chose to talk in the basement was fortuitous, however, because the space had the effect of producing a perfect record of the conversation, fortuitously assembled under studio conditions. Throughout this record, there is no ambiguity whatsoever. What is reported here was said, verbatim. Their presence in the studio also facilitated the video record, since the camera set up to record Gemma’s lecture could be accessed remotely. The video record is not quite complete, however, since the placement of screens and curtains to enhance the audio quality of Gemma’s recordings did obscure some of the facilities that had been installed earlier. Because of Gemma’s daily occupancy of the room, there had arisen no suitable opportunity to correct this detail.

Gemma settled down to work and was grappling with an impenetrable paper on the necessity of intellectual conflict inevitably created by Derrida’s post-structural deconstruction of the concept of popularity, or otherwise, when applied to the notion of ‘popular’ art, especially music. The paper examined, philosophically, the nature of the ownership of the concept ‘popular’ from the point of view that the label identified a particular genre, a populist and thus a political proposition, rather than an achieved state. Intellectually, she had spent many hours, probably years, grappling with the attraction of this analysis of interests which suggested the powerful will always seek to control, but, as someone who ultimately believed in respect for people and their good nature, she found herself confused as to why so many could be so easily fooled. False consciousness was not a concept that allowed her to sleep at night.

Edward came down the stairs with his trademark flatfoot clatter just after seven thirty. Elsie had already left for work, since she was involved all week in production work at a location out of London and Geoff had also, of course, already set off for the office. Father and daughter knew, therefore, that they were alone in the house, so we may assume they had no reason to hold back on anything they might say.

“Sorry, Gem... Am I disturbing...”

“It’s a great tactic to enquire about a deed that’s already done. I’m sorry… I was bang in the middle of penetrating the impenetrable, denying the undeniable, cavorting with the uncavortable…”

“Contemporary French sociology, by any chance…?”

“Spot on. How on earth did you know?”

“Force of habit, I suppose…” He laughed and so did his daughter. For these two academics, it was a joke like two mathematicians might share about the sum of two and two.

Edward smiled. “Sociologist daughters...”

“Sociologist daughter excavates archaeologist father. It sounds just like a headline from the Sun.”

“More like Angler’s Weekly...” Edward said, trying to match her for irony. He opted for a diversion. “Many years ago, I came across a headline quite by chance in a copy of Angler’s Weekly, when I knocked a copy of the magazine off the rack in our library at college. I was reaching for The Listener, I recall. The magazine fell open at an inside page and I read the large print headline, ‘Is a bloodworm ban logical?’. It was an experience that somehow lodged in my mind to such an extent that I have never forgotten the line. It was over forty years ago, but the memory has proved indelible. It’s strange how the random can intrude uninvited into the permanence of life.”

“A bit like a virus… Tell Derrida,” Gemma said.

“I brought this,” he said, handing over the single sheet summary he had himself handwritten from his medical consultation forty-eight hours before. “I thought I might be a good place to start.” His voice, hardly changed, offered those miniscule but definitive stops that locate the serious.

There followed approximately three minutes of near silence. Gemma made a noise or two, a grunt, a sharply taken breath, a hint of a resigned sigh. She finished reading and immediately turned over the sheet to start again, apologizing and stating what she was doing. In total, she read the document three times, by which time she had already committed much of its content to quotable memory.

She placed the sheet on the table by her keyboard and initially did not look at her father. She closed her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. She then burst into tears and turned to embrace him. For several minutes, she sobbed uncontrollably, her face buried into her father’s chest so she could feel the living tickle of his beard on her cheek as her body convulsed.

It was an experience that returned her momentarily to childhood when the sensation of bristle on skin reassured a little girl of the father’s presence, the father’s care, the father’s singularity, the father’s permanence. For this short time, the reflex ruled both body and mind.

Clearly also recalling behaviours from almost fifty years earlier, Edward said precisely nothing. He made not a single sound as he stroked his daughter’s back with his right hand. For just a moment, she was again an infant in her father’s comfort, a child for whom life had presented an insurmountable challenge, a child for whom a parent’s protection would temporarily exclude an intruding reality. They separated, shared tears still flowing.

There was a box of tissues on her desk. She took a few to blow her nose and wipe her eyes, their dampened mass then screwed up in her hand and grasped rather than discarded, though the large and empty waste bin was next to her chair. She continued to roll the damp tissues, repeatedly compressing the paper mass as she spoke.

“Dad...”

“For now, at least.”

“I assume there is some treatment that might help?” Her tone assumed that there would be.

“There will be no treatment, Gem. I am absolutely clear about that.” Edward paused to allow his words to register. “I have spent my life digging around in the remains of human lives. Personally, I do not want to become someone else’s research project for at least ten thousand years, and then only in the form of ashes.”

“So, you are just going to accept what this says?” Gemma nodded at the sheet now lying on her desk, her gesture almost suggesting that it might never have existed, at least that its content might remain negotiable.

“Have I a choice? It’s pretty explicit, Gem. It says I have advanced pancreatic cancer that has already spread to other organs. We are talking weeks, if that.” Edward’s outstretched arms were now holding his daughter’s upper arms, his limbs extended as if to say to the child he was addressing that she would soon have to cope with this new reality in her own way and alone. For a short time, he was again the parent. “It has always seemed to me that we live our active lives in a state of assumed wellbeing and at least potential self-sufficiency. We can cope. We never admit real weakness and though we allow thought of serious illness to enter our consciousness, we regard every illness as treatable, every problem as solvable. What we never do is place ourselves in the mental state where we, ourselves, alone, have no control over an outcome. Until that moment arises, that moment when it is taken forever out of our hands… Then it takes over, dictates to us, denies us even a say in our own future. In the past, when that coping came to an end, we simply died. Now, when we fall ill, we become someone’s research project, eventually merely evidence for a statistical proof or denial of a thesis. It may well be that the overall process does benefit other people, but I just do not want to participate in a research project where I am not the director. You know I’ve always been a control freak... There will be no treatment. I don’t want an extra few weeks if those weeks are in hospital puking and shitting my samples into someone’s database. I am going to accept the diagnosis as final and let things happen. Doctor Khan doubted that I would live beyond a few weeks.”

Gemma was again close to tears. “A few weeks... A few more... A few more again. How long is the piece of string?”

“Don’t try to raise your hopes, Gem. There’s no ambiguity here. I can feel the changes in myself. I get tired when I do things. I have to sit to recuperate. Sometimes I just end up sitting for longer, because I don’t feel any better. I used to discipline my body. My brain used to repeat something like, ‘Don’t be so stupid’ to my muscles and I always used to be able to carry on. But it doesn’t seem to work anymore. There will soon come a time when I can’t make myself feel better, when I will take to my bed and I will never get up. If morphine is an option, I’ll have it.”

Father and daughter spent several minutes in shared silence. Throughout, Gemma was trying to suppress the tears that constantly welled in her visibly shaking body. She was consciously trying to breathe longer and deeper as time passed, obviously trying to recall the techniques she had learned in her yoga classes, sessions that suddenly seemed rendered dysfunctional. Father and daughter did not look at one another but stared mutually into private infinities that shared no common territory. It was Edward who spoke at last.

“I spent all day yesterday going through the details. I made a list...”

“I’ve heard that one before...”

“I made another of my famous lists - and there aren’t going to be many more - detailing all the bank accounts, investments, assets, pensions, all the things to do with money, credit cards et cetera... I’ve listed them all and got new balances and values for all of them. I have put contact numbers for recording my death on the same document, along with usernames and passwords for the online access. I have even drafted a standard letter that you can send to any relevant recipient. I’ve sent you the documents as attachments to your email. All you will need to do is fill in a date and attach the death certificate.”

“It’s almost as if it’s already happened...”

“I can assure you it hasn’t... Yet... But it will.”

“Are you in pain?”

“Absolutely not. Well, there are some cramps around my middle at times, but it’s nothing… a bit like indigestion. But the rest… All I can sense is this growing tiredness. It is getting worse. Just a week ago, I was rushing up the escalator from the tube...”

“You know people move faster if everyone just rides the escalator?”

“Only at times of maximal use, darling. There was hardly anyone else around when I sprang up the moving stairs.”

“You always liked using that term, moving stairs. I remember when we used to go shopping on Oxford Street when I was a kid...”

“And that would not have been often... I used to hate the experience.”

“Let’s take the moving stairs to the toy department... You used to say that to mum when we were in Debenhams. Why were they moving stairs? Why not ‘escalator’?”

“It was political, Gem.” The incongruity raised a laugh. “Harold Wilson used to talk about the Vietnam War. He was always on about why we should not see an escalation in the conflict, as if escalators never went down. ‘Moving stairs’ arose out of my and your mom’s contempt for what we saw as the Labour Government’s refusal to condemn the war, let alone institute socialist policies. It was really a euphemism for ‘Isn’t Harold Wilson a shit’. It’s what it felt like at the time. I would give almost anything to have him back now.”

Gemma’s affectionate smile faded only after a full minute of silently shared memory. “It all seems so pointless now...”

“It was pointless then, Gem. Our problem in the sixties was that we were convinced by the illusion, later delusion that we actually had the opportunity and the power to change things. By the time you came along and we were shopping in the late seventies and eighties, we spoke about our youthful idealistic concerns only in code and ‘moving stairs’ had become one of our shared summary terms. We used to say, ‘Great Leap Forward’ with the same defeatism, usually when we crossed the road.”

“Life is a complicated thing, isn’t it?”

“Only if you complicate it. Your mom and I were a happy pair. We supported one another. We were happy. We had a beautiful and talented daughter. We had the house by then,” he said, casting a momentary glance at the walls and ceiling. Edward and Penny Pitcairn, of course, inherited the property from Penny’s parents, who officially lived there until their deaths, just three months apart. Both had in fact died in this house, despite having spent most of their last years in their Gloucestershire cottage. It had seemed at the time that both needed to end their lives within reassuring surroundings that reminded them of happiness, family, stability. “Your mum and I both had mildly successful careers, which we also found fulfilling... We can’t grumble. But, like all good things, it comes to an end.”

“...domestic bliss is my heritage... And then I fucked it up...” The heavy irony in her voice was surreal. The first phrase was clearly something of a dig at her father’s assessment of their family life, which was partial, idealised and barely accurate, if not absolute fiction, while the second admitted no personal responsibility whatsoever for her own disasters.

“You did nothing of the sort, Gem. You did what you wanted with your life, that’s all. You made your own way, decided things for yourself. You studied what you wanted, took the courses that interested you, made a success of the career you chose. You met a bloke, fell in love and had a perfectly good family life with your own beautiful and talented daughter. It was not your fault that John fell victim to the real disease of the age, self-delusion.”

“Self-delusion...that’s the best euphemism I have ever heard for fucking a younger woman.”

Edward smiled a loving smile. “Beautifully put...as ever…”

“Sociologists aren’t usually that direct or explicit, I have to admit. We tend to look for the complications, the counter-intuitive, the classifiable, especially when we can attach our own name to the system. Just imagine the Pitcairn Scale of matrimonial disloyalty, Level One the wandering eye, Level Two the clandestine meeting, Level Three the actual fuck. I wonder how many phenomenological studies I might need to conclude that only Level Three counts?”

“Well, that’s all behind you now. Don’t dwell on the past...”

“Says the archaeologist!”

Edward smiled. “But that is where it is - in the past. You have your career, a house, a wonderful daughter, a partner... There’s a lot of people who don’t have all that.”

Gemma did not speak, clearly preferring the silence to carry her meaning, which obviously related to his reference to ‘a partner’. Throughout, she stared directly at her father, her manner trying to communicate that she would give up everything if it would make him better. Edward, however, misinterpreted. He believed her pause was born of an inability to continue beyond that loaded word he had just uttered.

“You’ve been with Geoff for...five years, is that right?”

“About... On and off, sometimes more off than on. It started just as Elsie was finishing her degree. And the ‘together’ only applies part time. And, really, he’s only been around the house regularly for about two years, so he’s still quite new.”

Edward’s gaze expressed without words how little he trusted the man. Gemma’s also silent reply clearly agreed with the assessment, but also bore an expression that said, “But what do you expect me to do?”

“How did you meet? I’m sure you have told me, but I have clearly forgotten.”

“There’s no particular reason I would have told you, I suppose. We met at a Brexit meeting.”

Edward laughed. “Sounds romantic...”

“It wasn’t anything of the sort. I was in the Labour Party at the time and got heavily involved in the Remain campaign in this area. We did a number of meetings and invited several speakers, some of them quite high profile. After all, we are on Jeremy’s patch, aren’t we?” Gemma’s voice rather tailed off here, despite her claims of proximity to power.

Edward smiled, ruefully, raised his eyebrows and said, “Brexit… I bet he helped.”

Gemma laughed. “Not exactly. There’s nothing like a lukewarm endorsement, but we did become something of a focus for the media. We had several people do television nearby. There was a lot to do and Geoff was one of the people who volunteered to help. We seemed to get closer as the weeks passed and by the end the only Remain left was the relationship we had started by chance. It remained, so to speak.”

“…but you only meet occasionally, I think...”

“Yes, only when I need a fling…”

“Euphemisms, euphemisms…”

“I think such things often do get the better of our judgment, Dad. In your case, I think it was often a lack of judgment that so often led to...a conclusion.”

He smiled. “What was I just saying about euphemisms? I never tried to hide anything…”

“But then, you were never, shall we say, explicit about such things, were you?

“Your mum and I had an understanding…”

“Lots of women understand the same thing, Dad.”

“Are you happy?” It was not intended to sound like a non-sequitur.

Gemma shrugged. “That’s such a loaded question... Am I happy?” There was a deep and exaggerated intake of breath, and then an even more exaggerated sigh. “I’ve no idea. I’m not even sure what happiness is anymore. Like most people, I feel only a sense of defeat.”

The moment Gemma had uttered the words it was clear that she regretted them. She had just been told by her father that his life would imminently come to an end, and here was she, apparently unwilling to grasp her own future, a future that was not under any threat, except by her own willing hand. “I’m sorry, dad... I didn’t mean to...”

Edward interrupted. “It was a genuine question, Gem. It’s just that... Well, to be frank... Geoff seems an odd sort to me. He has a low status, pretty low paid job. He seems to want to appear non-intellectual, but I have the feeling that he is aware of everything, but he is unwilling to offer opinion, unwilling even to engage in discussion. To me, he always stays consciously aloof. He is the sort of person whose demeanour, expression, manner hardly ever seems to change. He’s always there, but he seems to want to be somehow detached. And then on some things, he is suddenly right in there, full of facts, aware of current thinking and ready to say what he thinks. At least that’s what comes across to me, even though he rarely offers anything. And yet he seems completely committed to things he rarely even talks about.”

“You mean on environmental issues.”

“Obviously. He often seems to be more radical even than Elsie.”

“It’s the passion of the age. The only reason why they don’t burn witches is the CO2 emission.”

He smiled. “Where does he work? Have you ever been there?”

“It’s just a benefit office. It’s near the Angel. He walks there. Says it keeps him fit. He has one of those pace counter apps on his phone. He says he needs his six thousand steps a day and he does more than that to the office and back. It’s over seven hundred just to the station.”

“You’ve counted it?”

“I always did. Don’t you remember? And I still try to avoid treading on the cracks between the paving stones.”

“Do you still drive to work, or do you use public transport? Do you ever leave the house with him, walk to the station, take the train…?”

“Dad, we’ve been in a pandemic for over a year. I’ve hardly been to college. I’ve done barely a few days in my office in over a year. We Zoom everything, which is unfortunate, because I have to spend half my time tidying the house to keep the background orderly. It seems to me that people on Zoom spend most of the call scrutinizing and identifying everything in your room. They know the brand of coffee you drink, the titles of the books on your shelves and whether any of them have moved since the last call. At least with Zoom you have to schedule things, but with WhatsApp running half the day as well, you never know when someone might connect for whatever reason. I was in the loo last time the boss called. And I was even looking at the phone when it rang. I took the call sitting there.”

“But normally, you would drive to work?”

“Or take the bus. I can get a 30 from the Corner and then a 26 gets me the last bit, or I can even walk.”

“But you’ve not been using the bus since the pandemic broke.”

“Very few people have.”

Edward was again silent for a while. He was clearly intent on probing. “Where’s he from? Geoff, I mean...”

“South London. Wandsworth, East Putney area.”

“And what about education?”

“State school. None of your upper-class airs and graces with him. Comprehensive he was and comprehensive he is.”

“So, he went to Elliott?”

“I’ve no idea. Is that a school?”

“It was. The school is still there, but it changed its name a decade ago. How old is Geoff?”

“Thirty-eight, thirty-seven. His birthday is next week.”

“Speaking of people who take up with younger partners...”

“Dad! That’s cruel! I didn’t...”

“I’m only joking, Gem. So Geoff would have been in secondary school through the later part of the nineties.”

“That didn’t sound like a question.”

“It wasn’t. It’s inevitable.”

“Why all this interest in Geoff? What’s he done? Has he said something to you?”

Edward laughed. “I wish he had. He seems to offer me only a wall of unchanging mild interest. And it’s a disinterest I find far from convincing.”

What Edward did not say to Gemma was that he had reasons for his questions. Two days before, still in the daze that had enveloped him so suddenly during his meeting with Doctor Khan, Edward had decided to walk. Privately, it was an act of defiance. He had been told his time was short and that an overwhelming tiredness would soon render him inactive. A walk just might prove them all wrong. So, he set off at pace after his consultation. He had said his own “Screw quarantine” before he set off. He paid off the taxi driver, who was still waiting and then wandered.

He probably needed some space to think and reflect, to decide if, when and how he might tell his daughter that he would soon die. He had walked from the hospital heading south and east. As the streets offered their junctions, he chose his route at random. Of course, he knew most of the area so nothing was unfamiliar and there was no chance he might get lost, but he clearly just wanted to amble here and there, probably to mull over the devastating news he had just been given. He was feeling tired before long and paused on a bench in Bedford Square to muse, staring at the publishers’ offices that occupied the Georgian terraces, imagining perhaps that in a different life, he might have done business with them rather than with the editors of academic journals. He meandered the streets again and then paused on another bench in Russell Square, this time longer than before and then finally slumping to rest under full shade in Coram’s Fields, where he sat for half an hour and dozed off. He had done too much.

He woke around midday, having been in full sun for a while. He was uncomfortably hot, and his first thought was to retrieve his hat from the hold-all he had brought. He made as if to stand and then did not, having suddenly recognised two people sitting on a bench nearby, near enough for recognition, apparently in one direction only. He put on his hat but placed its string strap at the back of his neck and then pulled the hat forward off his head, so it obscured his beard, his one truly recognisable feature. He feigned the kind of doze one might expect from a recent dental patient.

One of the pair on the nearby seat was Geoff. The other Edward Pitcairn also recognised immediately, since it was a well-known television presenter and journalist. Edward paused and continued to observe, obviously sure that Geoff had not noticed him. It is absolutely certain that Edward Pitcairn noticed that it was Geoff who was being interviewed by the familiar woman, who continued to make notes while Edward watched. Their conversation lasted for a further ten minutes, during which time Edward Pitcairn continued to watch and to take note. He was, it must be recorded, well out of hearing range, though close enough for Geoff to have noticed him, if he had been on top of his job, which he clearly was not. After another five minutes, the pair on the bench stood, and started to head for the exit. Edward himself rose and ambled off in the general direction of St Pancras, a station he had habitually referred to as St Pancreas, but not today. His observed pair had departed a minute before and he had resolved to follow, but man and woman went their different ways along Mecklenburgh Street. In any case, Edward was never going to keep pace.

“So,” Edward continued to Gemma, “Geoff has absolutely nothing to do with the media? He is just a benefits clerk?”

Gemma was mildly confused, though not at all worried. “Why do you ask?”

Edward shrugged. “Just a question.”

“If you have any questions about media people, then Elsie is the one to ask. She seems to rub shoulders with well-connected people all the time. Whether she gets close is another matter. Whether anyone gets close to such people is a question that could occupy a sociologist’s career! I’m absolutely sure that Geoff doesn’t even have an interest in the media. Whenever Elsie talks about her work, Geoff doesn’t seem to be the slightest bit interested. It’s almost as if...”

“...he feigns disinterest?”

Gemma hesitated. “Now there’s a choice of words...” She clearly remembered her father’s previous use of the term to describe Geoff’s manner.

The sound of a toilet flushing on the floor above told them they were not, as they had thought, alone in the house. Gemma stood up from her desk and took the three steps needed to reach the base of the stairs from the ground floor. The staircase turned a right angle at the bottom, the last two stairs protruding not to the floor space. It was on the upper of the two that she stood to peer upwards and call, “Hello...”

It was Geoff’s voice that answered. “Sorry, Gemma, I had to come home for some papers I left behind this morning. I thought I didn’t need the file today and I did.” By the time he had finished his sentence, he had descended the stairs and was standing on the staircase two steps above Gemma. He leaned forward and gave the top of her head a little kiss. “And there was a giant floater in the loo!” He was about to laugh when Edward spoke.

“Apparently it’s one of the symptoms.”

Geoff looked confused. “Symptoms?”

“Edward has pancreatic cancer, Geoff. It was confirmed the day before yesterday. The regular medical check was not quite regular this year.”

Geoff and Gemma both stepped away from the stairs and turned to face Edward, a move that left him sensing that he was being cast as a guilty party. “What sort of treatment will you have?”

“There will be no treatment. It’s terminal.” There was a lengthy pause. As ever, Geoff did not appear to be shocked. Nothing ever did shock him, it seemed. “I have things to finish,” Edward announced. “I’ll catch up with you later,” he said, starting to climb the stairs.

As the sound of his footfall began to fade towards an upper floor, Gemma said, “He is getting noticeably slower.”

“He is seventy-three.”

“And he won’t make seventy-four.”