Mr. Dunbarton held out a vigorous hand to be shaken. “My dear brigadier, how good to see you so much recovered. And so quickly.” They shook hands, the brigadier wilting under his gothic revival charm. “Some new treatment, perhaps? Something you were keeping secret from your dear wife for fear of disappointing her?”

  Of course he would want that to be true. And Gordon was disappointingly meek.

  “I suppose you might call it a new treatment”

  Mr. Dunbarton waited, hoping for more to be offered. When nothing further came, he clapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly. Mr. Dunbarton’s hands were a decoy—they attracted attention away from where the real activity was going on, in his head.

  “Wellwell wellwellwell,” he said, staking a claim. “Whatever it was, thank God for it, anyway.”

  “No, sir,” Now Gordon stood up very straight, and Sylvia was proud of him. “No sir, not God. Thank ustiliath.” Sylvia didn’t know exactly what to expect, but she certainly expected some reaction from Mr. Dunbarton: if not a sudden seizure on the spot, then at least a resounding inquisitorial denunciation. She got neither. The inquisition or rather its method, was two hundred years dead.

  “Now that’s very interesting,” said Mr. Dunbarton. He hesitated. “Do you mind if we sit down?” he said, turning to his hostess, reminding her of her manners.

  The social gaffe threw her. She was distracted, and babbled, plumped cushions, offered sherry and was politely refused. She was relieved when they disposed themselves around the sitting room, each at a safe, middle-class distance from the other.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Dunbarton, opening one hand towards the empty grate, “very interesting…extremely so. You see, I’ve just come from someone else who mentioned this ustiliath. A man from your old regiment: Mr. Wilcox along at the hospital. Yes…he talked to me a lot about this ustiliath.” He withdrew his hand and added, by way of an afterthought, ““I’m sure you’ll be sorry to hear that it seems quite certain now he’ll be in a wheelchair the rest of his days. Apparently the boy’s knife damaged his spine irremediably.”

  Sylvia perked up, not seeing the strategy, merely her opportunity to score. “That’s only because the missionaries are away in London,” she said. “They’ll be certain to see to it just as soon as they get back.”

  Mr. Dunbarton sighed, pleased not to have been answered in the least. “Prevention,” he said gently, “would have been very much better—for a faith that apparently laws such store by the here and now—than cure.” Gordon, still uncertain of himself in this kind of argument, cleared his throat. “You’ve put your finger on the biggest difference,” he said. “The Christian god is supposed to exist out there …is supposed to know everything and be ever watchful Though if that’s the case he makes a pretty poor job of looking after her own. On the other hand—” he rode over the vicar’s mild interruption, “on the other hand, ustiliath is not out there. Ustiliath is not a separate creator. Ustiliath is just a force, like any other. Electricity, gravity, anything you care to mention.” He faltered. “No, that’s not quite right, because there’s ustiliath in all of these too. It’s just that ustiliath is the most powerful, because its bias is constructive, positive, good.”

  Mr. Dunbarton smiled in a kindly manner. “It’s obviously a very difficult concept,” he said.

  “Not at all.” Gordon was angry, not with the vicar, but with himself for his inadequacy. “Look here, how would you like to have to explain this three in one business of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?”

  “Touché.” Mr. Dunbarton spread his hands downwards in mock surrender. “The doctrine of the Trinity is far too subtle and many-facetted for parlour politics.”

  The hands came together again and Gordon and Sylvia waited, not knowing what—if anything—had been won or lost. Mr. Dunbarton allowed the pause, then smiled disarmingly.

  “It’s perfectly obvious,” he said, “that this little visit of mine is by way of being what you, brigadier, would call a recon. First of all, of course, there was the matter of your cure to be investigated. In the absence of a proper medical report I must say it seems very remarkable, and I congratulate you.”

  “The doctor comes tomorrow.” Sylvia wanted him to know that the right things were being done. “It’s his regular weekly call. Gordon wouldn’t have him sent for specially, he said there was no need.”

  The vicar acknowledged this with a polite bowing of the head. “Secondly, there is the distressing matter of two souls lost to Christianity. Your two souls, Gordon and Sylvia.”

  He’d never called her that before, and it made him sound terribly serious.

  “We in the Anglican Church do not like to talk of heresy. Besides, it is the Indian god Kali, I think, who says ’To whomever you pray, I shall answer/ All the same, the renunciation of a lifetime’s faith should not be undertaken lightly. And certainly not, “he looked up sharply, no longer kind, “certainly not on the hysterical acceptance of one so-called miracle.”

  Sylvia was shocked by the sudden attack. She would—as intended—have backed up hysterical acceptance with hysterical defence, had not Gordon got in first.

  “Historically speaking,” he said, “there have been many conversions that could fairly be called hysterical. You have only to think of St. Paul, whose sudden conversion was even attended by hysterical blindness. For all that it was no less genuine. And no less lasting.”

  George had prepared him well. But Mr. Dunbarton looked at him sadly. “This isn’t you talking, Gordon. These aren’t your ideas. They aren’t even your words.”

  “You’re suggesting that my long illness has made me over-impressionable.” George again. “That may be so. But have you seen the missionaries? Can you honestly imagine me listening to die worst sort of motorcycling oaf, unless what he said made particularly good sense?” Mr. Dunbarton smiled, and shifted his attack. A few minutes later he shifted his attack again. Gordon was enjoying himself—using his brain, really using his brain, for die first time in years. Coundess peacetime staff conferences had dulled it, as, regrettably, had his marriage.

  Mr. Dunbarton remained professionally unruffled. The bishop had suggested that he do his duty, so he did it. But cranky ideas were very common among men and women of a certain age—a typical change-of-life syndrome, he thought—and doubtless God would be far more patient with them than ever he could be. His eyes wandered increasingly often to the clock on the mantle-piece. Finally he rose to his feet, restrained, wise, and just a little sad.

  “I’ve taken up too much of your time,” he said, humbly. “But I hope you will remember my words, and think about them—perhaps later, at a time when everything doesn’t seem so crudely black and white. When gratitude for your apparent cure is less blinding.” Then he straightened. Enough gentle sadness was enough. “And think especially, Gordon, about your wife. To take her faith from her and replace it with some slipshod fad is a serious responsibility.”

  He went to the door. “You know where to find me. Do not hesitate to call on me at any time, day or night. And I shall pray for you. I shall pray for you both.”

  Sylvia was shaken. How terrible to have a vicar so sad, so hurt for her. She showed him out carefully, like precious china. And she did not meet his eyes. When she got back to the sitting room Gordon was at the window, scornfully watching Mr. Dunbarton get into his car.

  “I shall pray for you” he imitated. Then he laughed. “The damn fellow made it sound like a curse.”

  Dacre had been in the stable yard when Mr. Dunbarton arrived, getting out his bike to go down into South Molton. He had ducked back out of sight. Since his hateful interview with William he had tried on two separate occasions to talk to his father about the two faces of ustiliath.

  On the first occasion Gordon had heard him out. “What are you trying to tell me, Dacre? That William is unpleasant? Does it matter? Has there never before been an unpleasant priest?”

  “And a priest who seems quite indifferent to human suffering? Doesn’t he matter either?”

  “Means and ends, Dacre. Nothing gets done without somebody getting hurt.”

  Dacre disliked being reminded of his father’s profession. But he made a point of taking people as they were, and his father—as well as being his father—was a soldier. Soldiers believed such things.

  “And what about all this ‘good intent’ they pretend is so important?”

  “Complete innocence is a luxury few people can afford. Belief in ustiliath is belief in action. Ustiliath will be accepted because—unlike Christianity—it depends on no impossible ideal. Its practice matches its theory.”

  “And you’re happy with both.”

  It wasn’t a question. He saw his father try to control his temper. Intellectually Gordon accepted that a son had a right to say such things to him, but emotionally he found them offensive, jumped-up, intolerable.

  “Yes, boy, I am. Happier than I have ever been.”

  Against that what could, what should, Dacre say? He said nothing. But over the last few days his usual safe distance from others had dwindled till now, when he wasn’t very careful, his flesh touched other flesh: Bright Boy’s flesh, his mother’s flesh, and particularly his father’s flesh, anyway reality and pain of its dying. It was a contact he dreaded, but needed. So, next time they were alone, he tried again.

  His father turned on him.

  “You’re jealous, boy. I’ve got something you haven’t, and you’re jealous.” Offensive, jumped-up, intolerable. “You should come out from behind all that long hair and noisy machinery, and try to find a little humility.”

  A single sentence, wrapping up every loveless prejudice of his generation. After it nothing more was possible. They didn’t even snipe across the void. Dacre was too busy with his hurt, and Gordon with his inner revelation.

  So Dacre had ducked back out of sight when Mr. Dunbarton arrived, not wanting to be involved with the vicar and the vicar’s probable business with his father. When Mr. Dunbarton was safely in the house he wheeled out his bike and drove quickly away. He had other worries. There had been a call from the police in South Molton that morning, asking that he presented himself for fingerprinting at his earliest convenience. That meant at once.

  He parked outside the police station and went up the steps. When he was halfway up the doors opened, and Janey Martin came through. He stopped, surprised and uncertain whether to be pleased or not.

  Evidently she was there for the same purpose as he, for she came through the door rubbing her fingertips urgently on the legs of her jeans. To her police ink would be like blood, deeply unclean, to be rubbed at long after none remained.

  She stopped rubbing when she saw him, tucked her hands secretly behind her back, and would have pushed past him without speaking. He moved across to block her path. He hadn’t seen her since the night of the missionaries’ arrival.

  “You’ve been avoiding me.” It wasn’t that she, as a person, represented a loss. Touching her flesh had never been more than a way of not touching anything else. But he wanted her, he wanted everybody, to know where he stood. “D’you think it’s my fault?” he said. “All this stupid business, d’you think it’s my fault? Because it’s not.”

  “You keep off.” She shrank back from his touch. “That’s all I say—just you keep off.”

  “It’s no use blaming me, Janey. “I’m sorry you were involved. But—”

  “It’s no use you going on. There’s things I know. Things I’ve told other people. So just you keep off.”

  “Things, Janey? What sort of things?”

  She edged sideways. At first he’d thought she was angry with him, but now he saw she wasn’t. She was afraid. There, in broad daylight, on the scrubbed, protective steps of the police station, she was afraid of him. He caught her arm as she dodged by, wrestled with her, brought her hand out from behind her back. She stopped struggling and twisted so that her hand stood rigidly in the air between them. He could feel her trembling, could hear her tight, frightened breath. She was looking at her hand, not at him. He saw that her thumb was tucked in, and the first and second fingers were crossed.

  It was hard to credit. But he didn’t laugh. Not at her, not at her poor, pathetic gesture. If she made this sign, the age-old sign against the evil eye, it was because she believed in it—and because she thought she needed it. It stood between them, stronger than the police she might have called, stronger against him than all the police in England: the sign against the evil eye, there, in broad daylight, on the scrubbed, protective, twentieth century steps of South Molton police station.

  “What have people been saying, Janey?” If someone had told him such a thing he wouldn’t have believed it “What nonsense have you been listening to?”

  “Never mind all that I knows what I knows.” She looked back at her fingers. “And he did the job, didn’ he? You got to let me be now, Dacre Wordsworth.”

  The sign had indeed done the job alright In his pity for her he could do nothing. With such mumbo-jumbo abroad in the land the missionaries would soon be kings. For the first time his dislike of them was tinged with fear.

  He released Janey and she retreated, holding her crossed fingers out like a goad. Down in the street the South Molton traffic came and went. He noticed that a bored small boy had stopped to watch.

  “You can’t believe that “I’m a witch.” Please. Please don’t believe such a dangerous lie.

  “Possession, that’s what it’s called. My friend knows. She says it’s called possession.”

  So secondhand, so muddled. But Janey was ugly now, with bright, ugly eyes.

  “Making folks see what idn’ there. Other things too.” She was gaining courage as the distance between them increased. “Praying to devils up in that farm of yours. I know…folks dying, folks getting healed. And old Wilcox now, struck down in the pride of his ranting. Struck down, he were. Struck down.”

  How easily she slipped into her mother’s turn of phrase, her grandmother’s, her great-grandmother’s. And what had he in reply, except his father’s, his grandfather’s, his great-grandfather’s?

  “My dear girl, surely you don’t honestly believe that.”

  But she wasn’t listening. “Not that you’m more’n small fry, Dacre Wordsworth.” She was safe now, able to be insulting, quite out of range. “They say the devil do have a dirty big cock. Reckon that’s lets you out, don’ you? Don’ you, Dacre bloody Wordsworth?”

  In the face of that he had nothing to fall back on, not even his great-grandfather. As he watched, her gesture evolved three hundred years, the fingers separating and thrusting upward. Then she turned, possessed of magical importance, a person, no longer a gang accessory, and walked proudly away.

  Dacre stayed motionless: destroyed. He told himself the insult was childish, primeval. He told himself he was twentieth century, sophisticated, no longer so crudely vulnerable. He told himself the insult didn’t have to be true, in fact probably wasn’t. But he stood all the same, motionless on the steps of the police station, shamed before the one small boy who had stopped to watch. Only when Janey was quite out of sight could he bring himself to move. He turned and went slowly up through the big blue doors.

  The policeman at the desk, who couldn’t have heard, who could very well have heard, recognised him at once and greeted him in a friendly—mocking?—fashion. It was a small town. These things got about.

  “Sorry to have to trouble you with all this, Mr. Wordsworth.” He was bringing out ink pads, official forms, arranging them on the counter. “Orders from on high, you see. Ours not to reason why. No more than a formality, sir. No offence meant, and none taken, I hope. You can always refuse, sir, and it won’t be held against you. Make somebody’s job a bit more difficult, that’s all. Still, it’s nice when we get cooperation from the public. Very nice.”

  Dacre hadn’t really been listening. His mind had been elsewhere, shrivelled down inside his trousers. But one thing the policeman said caught his attention. He could always refuse, and it wouldn’t be held against him.

  The reason for the fingerprinting was now clear. The presence of Janey there as well made it obvious that the prints were needed for comparison with those of the missionaries. They would be identical and would go a long way towards establishing the missionaries’ nonhuman origin—it being an article of official faith that no two human beings could possibly have identical fingerprints. If they were outside the human species, then perhaps they were also outside human law. Dacre realised that by letting his fingerprints be taken he would be helping the missionaries a great deal: the bloody missionaries who, on top of everything else, had laid him open to the most intimate insult a man could suffer.

  “I’m sorry, officer, but did you just say I needn’t give my fingerprints if I don’t want to?”

  “That is so, sir. There has been no arrest, and therefore—”

  “Then I don’t want to. In fact, I bloody refuse.” He glared across the counter. “I bloody refuse to bloody give my bloody fingerprints.”

  There was a pause. The policeman looked at him sadly.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, sir.” He sounded sincere. “You see, there’s that motorbike you rode up on, Mr. Wordsworth. I happened to be at the window, and I happen to have very good eyesight. I’d say your road tax was a few days out of date, wouldn’t you? I was going to suggest quietly that you got it seen to, sir. But…”

  The word lingered mournfully, giving the impression that it hurt the policeman far more than it hurt Dacre.

  “And of course, sir, if your road tax isn’t valid, then you’re in trouble with your insurance. Very hot the courts are, on matters of insurance…”

  Again the regretful suspension. Dacre tried to remember when the tax had come due, and why he hadn’t renewed it.

  “Then again, sir, there’s the question of excessive noise. We’re always getting complaints, sir, and mostly a kindly word in the offender’s ear works wonders. All the same, the act does exist for the public’s protection.”