Banquet for the Damned

CHAPTER FOUR

'It still seems like an omen.'

'Cut it out, Tom,' Dante says, dropping his head to stare at the sea so far below, rushing in with a foamy roar to crash and then drag itself back across the black rocks and reef. They stand on the coastal path, outside of their new flat at the end of the long and leafy road known as the East Scores, that ambles from the ruined castle to the long pier, the latter built from the consecrated stone of cathedral rubble. Despite the early-morning excitement of waking up in strange beds, in a house somewhere other than Birmingham, they fail in their attempts to ignore a growing sense of unease.

'But within the first ten minutes of us getting here, Johnny Law pulls an arm out of the sea,' Tom continues, his face tense and committed to his point. 'Things like that just don't happen up here. I mean, look around you, Dante. It's beautiful. I bet the place hasn't changed in centuries.'

'Must have been a shark attack. Or some fisherman who fell under the rotor blades of his engine,' Dante says, gazing into the middle distance, the familiar focus of the preoccupied. 'It probably didn't even happen here. You know, just got washed in from the sea.'

Tom follows Dante's stare and looks at the horizon, to find what his friend is searching for. 'And I was looking forward to a swim down there,' he adds quietly, to himself.

Dante looks at his friend's face, at the strong bones and even features, framed by a fringe of silky hair. Tom's lips are pursed and he blinks his eyes quickly as he tries to make sense of things in his own way: not often given to protracted thought or tiring anxiety like Dante, who begins to laugh at himself, and at Tom.

'What?' Tom says. His mouth twitches with the notion of laughter.

'You thought of going for a swim.'

'You're sick. But I do need two arms to play a guitar.'

Dante laughs until he wheezes.

Tom slaps his shoulder. 'Man, why did I let you talk me into this? There's shark-infested waters, no totty, and to top it off our flat is probably haunted.'

'Enough,' Dante says. He wipes his eyes. 'You never cease to amaze me. You have seen some poor bastard's arm on the sand and already your prime concern is pulling.'

Tom grins, relieved their camaraderie has returned. 'I have to do something when you're yakking to Eliot. Which reminds me, you still haven't phoned him, have you?'

Dante's stomach tightens. 'There's time.'

Narrowing his eyes accusingly, Tom says, 'You're scared. You're crapping yourself. Aren't you?'

'Come off it. There was no time last night and I don't have his home number.'

Lighting a cigarette and smiling to himself, Tom turns his body and leans against the iron rail separating the path from an awful drop that does something to the nerves in Dante's rectum whenever he looks down. 'What was wrong with this morning? His study is, like, thirty feet from our pad and right behind us.'

'I'm not scared. I just want to familiarise myself with the town first.'

Tom squints through the cloud of smoke that drifts over his face. 'Familiarise yourself. Of course.'

Dante can often fool himself, but fooling Tom is impossible. A mutual intuition has existed between them since the day they met at school, aged fourteen. And the very thought of meeting Eliot Coldwell saps the strength from his limbs. He's always fantasising about what it would be like to meet someone famous, like Axl Rose. What would you say to someone like Axl, someone you admire but also fear? What if they are vile? What if they ignore you, or even smack you down because you're just another dumb fan crowding their space? Guns'n'Roses ignited a renaissance in his musical tastes. After hearing Appetite for Destruction for the first time, it was as if his destiny paused and then turned in another direction to kindle the awakening of his interest in music, and to create Sister Morphine. And then an album that led him to choose part-time work after graduation and the threadbare rock'n'roll lifestyle it barely supported.

But he knows Eliot Coldwell's influence goes far beyond his musical infatuations. Banquet for the Damned offers not just an escape but a confirmation of everything he wants to be. As a teenager he read the book continuously in a darkened room festooned with M?tley Crüe and Ratt posters, warmed by a glow of wonder under his skin. Some kind of epiphany had begun inside him, a strange blend of awakening, inspiration, and comfort. Telling anyone how he feels about the book now, other than Tom, is difficult. Difficult to find the words and difficult not to sound like a fool. It seems like such a cliché – a book changing your life – but it is as if Banquet for the Damned exerted a strange influence on the choices he's made. Suddenly, after the first read in his mid-teens, the acquisition of experience became his goal. Tasting every aspect of life became his aim. The search for fulfilment had to be endless, no time could be wasted with routine, nothing ordinary settled for, mediocrity became the devil. Eliot Coldwell's motives and desires became his own. And now he is going to meet the forgotten author. To sit before a man he considers great. A man who writes of riches lurking behind the everyday world, and waiting to be found.

'In at the deep end, buddy. It's the only way,' Tom says.

Dante's face pales. Cigarette tar curdles in his stomach and he becomes light-headed. 'What if I make a tit of myself? Start gabbling and saying stupid things. We're talking about research work. I'm not a scholar. I write lyrics for heavy metal songs. Who am I kidding?'

'Bullshit,' Tom says. He stares at the side of Dante's head. 'I have seen you sing in front of three hundred drunken bikers in shit-kickers' heaven and you never let us down. Even when we were the support act and people just wanted to throw shit, you came through. You always won the punters over, getting them all clapping and freaking out. You did it. There's nothing to worry about. You can do anything. And Eliot's just a man. An old man. OK, a clever one, but flesh and blood all the same. Problem is, you've spent too much time reading his book by candlelight, elevating him into a god or something. I mean, you even reckon he's a saint.'

Tom's words resound inside Dante. His tide suddenly turns. He feels gregarious and confident. He remembers the haggle with sullen bar owners over the band's fee and he sees himself crooning above a mesmerised audience; he recalls the girls after a gig, gathering around them, and the strangers that always wanted to shake his hand. Why should he falter now? It was Eliot that spoke for leaps of faith, discovering purpose, heightening the mind and taking a glimpse behind the screens. Dante turns around and smiles at Tom. 'Find me a phone box.'

Eliot Coldwell is waiting and will see him right away.

Something hot and strong pulses through Dante's entire body. After barging out of the phone box on Market Street he offers his hand to Tom, who gives it a firm two-handed clasp. 'See, I told you,' Tom says, pleased with the smile on his friend's face. 'Nothing to worry about. He can't wait to meet you. What did he sound like?'

'Don't know. It was his secretary. She was really sharp though.'

'Well, the sun is out. Who wants to be stuck in some divinity office on a day like this?'

'Sure, maybe. Jesus, what shall I say? Should I change?'

'The day you sell out, buddy, is the last day you see me.'

Laughing, Dante strokes his fingers through his hair, breaking the little fringe knots before tying it back. Tom dances on the spot. 'Just waltz in and get chatting. Get me on the guest list for dinner at his place.'

'What're you going to do? It might take hours.'

'Don't worry, fella. I'm going to check out the castle and wander around the town. Just kick back and get some food for the flat too.'

'Good call,' Dante whispers, only hearing the end of Tom's answer.

They punch each other's fists before separating. Tom disappears up Bell Street toward South Street, leaving Dante on his own amongst the morning shoppers on Market Street. Taking deep breaths and trying to compose opening lines, he makes slow progress back to the School of Divinity on the Scores, muttering. 'Mr Coldwell, it's an honour.' Dante shakes his head in disgust. 'Mr Coldwell, you don't know how much this means to me after all I've been through.' He swears under his breath. Nothing but pitiful clichés roll through the fog in his head. It just isn't coming, he is too highly strung, too excited and scared. Will his throat clog up? Will his eyebrow start to twitch the way it did at the first Sister Morphine gig? Will sweat drench his back while something dizzy runs around his skull, throwing the first piece of crap that shoots through his brain straight onto his tongue? 'Just be cool. Just be yourself. Be honest,' he whispers, as his boots roll across the cobbles at the top of Market Street by the monument. After turning left down South Castle Street, he feels the shadows from the surrounding stone walls cool on his face.

Dante crosses North Street. Tall flat-faced houses stand in shadow on one side of the street. Most of the homes are shades of grey or brown in colour, Victorian terraces embellished by an incongruously pink or yellow front. Across the wide road, the sun transforms the chapels, towers and faculty fortresses into a mediaeval city of gold. After what seems like a limbo in the industrial purgatory of the West Midlands, he begins to wonder if he'll ever become accustomed to the new aesthetics of space, antiquity and grace in St Andrews.

Retracing his footsteps, he finds North Castle Street at the easterly end of town, just before the perimeter wall of the ruined cathedral, and wanders down the narrow street, between the shadowy Episcopal Church and the small stone houses with deep-set windows offering glimpses of exclusive interiors; all wood, pottery, and tiled floors. Comfortable homes promising silent nights.

It makes him think of all his unchecked hours in a comfortless house, endured for the last two years, reading anything that reinforced his alienation and the sense of purpose that he hoped would arise from it. Banquet saved him. There is no doubt in his mind. Banquet added a direction to a young life embalmed in endless retrospection and dreaminess. Everything he read in the book about Eliot's adventures, optimism and willpower allowed some kind of warmth into his cold room, or into the lock-up on the industrial estate they spent hours inside, freezing while they rehearsed and made endless eight-track recordings of what was to be their first album. Despite the poverty, at times the hunger too when they waited for Giro day, he only had to think of Banquet – of the creased cover and broken spine of his paperback copy beside the mattress and overflowing ashtray in his room – and he would know the struggle was necessary, forgivable, justified.

Reaching the foot of North Castle Street, where the lane joins the Scores, he is confronted with the view of the ruined castle once again. Overlooking the harbour, its broken walls stand across the road from the tree-fronted School of Divinity where Eliot works.

'God give me strength,' Dante mutters.

Two years before the trip to Scotland, he'd written to the last publisher of Banquet seeking confirmation that Eliot was still alive. In his letter, he detailed plans for the band to write and record their second record as a concept album on Eliot's book. Nearly one year later, when Eliot finally responded, Dante read the letter over and over again, slowly analysing each line until he knew them by heart. And he learned that Eliot taught at St Andrews University, in the School of Divinity, following a bout of ill health in North Africa which ended his travels. Other letters followed and a correspondence ensued, forcing him to rise to the occasion, writing to his hero with every ounce of passion and honesty inside him.

Turning the corner of North Castle Street, he wanders along the Scores and watches the grey majesty of the School of Divinity rise from between cottages on the left and Franklin House on its right. Standing at the foot of the gravel drive, he pauses to stare at the school's austere buttressed and turreted shape. Its three storeys of solid stone seem to hum like some vast reactor from the power of the minds within.

St Andrews University, School of Divinity: a strange place for Eliot to work. Dante frowns. By his own admission, Eliot is a mystic and born in the wrong century. He recorded his dabbling with occult science and pagan ritual in Banquet, while deriding Western religion for its severance of the bond with nature. Won't Eliot's interpretations of Christian thought be heretical? Maybe they study the Hindus too, Dante muses, lifting his face to the Gothic structure and feeling like a tattooed barbarian blinking awe-stricken eyes at the splendour of Ancient Rome. Above the chimneys, slate roof and skeletal fire escapes, the deep-blue sky engorges his chest with the one value he cherishes above all – hope.

Eliot has given him a vocation. Is he strong enough for it?

Dante walks up the smooth, dipped centre of the stone steps. At the top, he turns the front-door handle, hesitates, wipes his feet on the bristly mat, and then takes a step inside.

Like a powerful acid, the fragrance of academia dissolves his brief spell of confidence. It is as if a giant book has been snapped shut beneath his nose, wafting an intimidating scent-cloud of dusty spines, laminated plastic and varnished wood into his head.

Standing still inside the door, he looks at the glass-panelled bookcase fixed to a wall and filled with scholarly hardbacks written by the lecturing staff. Reminders of knowledge he does not have turn his stomach over. Dipping his head to steady his breathing, Dante catches sight of his scuffed biker boots and faded jeans and feels his legs go immediately numb.

On his left, beside an oaken honeycomb of pigeonhole post boxes, he sees a white door marked SECRETARY, and hears the judder and clatter of a keyboard from within. For a moment, the idea of running back to Tom and loading up the Land Rover glows in his thoughts.

'All change serves a purpose,' Eliot had written in words he could understand. 'Change and progress are not accidental; they come through the unchaining of an imagination. And behind them, faith and the will must power the sails.'

Dante forces himself toward the door and gives it a firm knock. Through the wood, he hears a long sigh and then a shrill female voice says, 'Yes.' Through the small gap he's made between the door and the frame, he pokes his head inside before following it with an arm. A woman, frowning but handsome, sits straight-backed behind a desk and computer.

Dante smiles. Her face doesn't move. He swallows. She raises an eyebrow above her glasses, perched halfway down her thin nose and fastened around her neck with a gold chain. 'Yes?' she asks, unable to conceal her annoyance. When her slender hands reluctantly leave the keyboard they create a red flash of long and immaculate fingernail. When he opens his mouth, a rasp dislodges from the back of his throat.

'Do you speak?' she asks.

'Yes,' he whispers before clearing his throat. 'I –'

'Will you come in? I can't hear you.'

Dante shuffles through the door and crowds his body into the corner, as far away from the woman's stare as possible. 'I'm here for an appointment with Mr Coldwell.'

The woman studies him. 'Dante Shaw,' she says to herself. 'What an appropriate name.'

'Sorry?'

'Nothing,' she replies, and leaps from behind her desk with an alacrity he doesn't expect from a secretary who works in a School of Divinity. High heels cage her feet and an elegant tight-fitting dress – sleeveless and cut above the knee – turns her slender shape into neat lines and hard curves. With an expert's ease on pencil-thin stilettos, the glamour-puss and guardian walks across to him, her pale legs flashing like a strobe, luring his eyes down. 'My name is Janice Summers. I am the senior administrator. Do you mind me inquiring about the nature of your appointment?'

'I'm here to assist Mr Coldwell with his research,' he announces in a voice controlled enough to submerge his Brummy accent.

She places her hands on her hips and a mocking smile spreads across her mouth. 'Research, you say. An investigation of Scotch whisky, no doubt?'

Dante flushes with annoyance. 'Research for his second book, actually.' His face reddens further, as he suddenly feels foolish about his use of the word 'actually'.

But, for a moment, whatever he said introduces a fleeting spectre of vulnerability to the woman's hard face. 'Book?' Her voice is little more than a whisper.

Dante nods his head, rejoicing inside from something that feels like an unexpected victory. She takes a deep breath and smiles, weakly. 'I had no idea Eliot was considering another book. I mean who would . . .' She stops herself, and reaches for the door handle behind him. Shuffling to one side, he lets her open the door. In a voice softer than her opening salvo, she asks him to follow.

Beside the administration office is a door marked STAIRWELL. As she moves down the stairs, he catches sight of her profile and notices the inquisitive, bird-like face has become preoccupied again. Eager to break the uncomfortable silence, he says, 'I've never met Mr Coldwell. We've not even spoken on the phone. I hope he isn't too busy.'

She frowns at him as if he has said something imbecilic. Dante averts his eyes and decides it will be better to stay silent around Janice Summers, who continues, with a puzzled expression on her face, to teeter down the stairs to a door marked BASEMENT.

Taking what he feels are reluctant steps, she then walks along the narrow basement corridor between walls covered with a patchwork of flyers, lists, scholarship details and emergency evacuation procedures. The corridor is lit by two overhead strip-lights, and a glimmer of natural light seeps through a dirty window in the top of the fire escape, situated at the far end of the passage.

Pausing before an unmarked door on the right, just before the fire exit, she then hesitates, and appears to be summoning the courage required to knock. Her face set with a grim concentration, she finally raps on the door.

In preparation for meeting his mentor, Dante brushes at his shirt, tightens his ponytail, and clears his throat.

A muffled sound rises from the unseen depths behind the door. As if repelled, Janice immediately steps back. 'Go on in,' she says, quietly, and it becomes apparent to Dante that she is not prepared to open the door and introduce him to Eliot. Instead, she hurries past him, back along the corridor toward the stairs. Dante places his hand on the door handle. A final glance down the corridor reveals Janice hovering in the mouth of the stairwell, still watching him, as if he is a menace. Eager to evade her eyes, he turns the door handle and enters.

A thick, smoky gloom confronts his eyes, all green-grey as if he is underwater. There is a strange spice in the air too, reminiscent of the cupboards in his gran's house, and thousands of book spines are crammed into every inch of ceiling-high shelf space, or littered across the tables and chairs. Closing the door, he turns to face a desk anchored heavily into one corner, beneath closed curtains faded to a shade of discoloured brass.

At first, the seated figure behind the desk is indistinct. In the dusk of the study, only an outline of Eliot's thin shoulders and lank hair can be seen. As he takes a puff on his cigarette, however, the little orange flare of burning tobacco briefly illumines the suggestion of a long nose and wide mouth. Between small hillocks of paperwork and pyramids of hardback books, Dante can see the shirt of the sunken silhouette. It may have been white, and there is a dark tie running down the front to broaden out between two barely visible arms. A weak band of light falls across the figure's slender hands, at rest beside a large overflowing ashtray.

'Hello Dante.' The shape speaks with a quiet, sonorous voice. 'I've been looking forward to meeting you for some time.'

'Me too,' Dante says, before immediately trying to analyse the connotations of his first words to Eliot Coldwell.

'Please come in and take a seat. I'm sure you'll find one before my desk.' All his words seem to have been weighed, in precise copper scales, before dropping through the air.

'Thanks.' Swinging his jacket off, Dante steals a glimpse at the great man's face now that he is closer. Dark eyes watch him beneath a broad and flat brow. Cheekbones are pointed and the jaw is square below hollow cheeks. Taut skin has weathered to a mahogany brown on his face and is salt-sprinkled with whiskers, but the neck is wizened. The distinguished face suggests wisdom, and time endured beneath foreign suns. A good face to end up and slow down with. Tom would look like that; he has that sort of skin.

'Is your accommodation satisfactory?' Eliot asks, his teeth stained and his breath tainted by alcohol.

'Yeah. Great. Thanks for –'

'Good. It provides a grand view of the sea, at any time of year.'

'We love it, Tom and I. Really it was very –' he has to remember to say good instead of cool '– good of you to sort us out. The place we were living in before, I think I told you –'

'In Birmingham,' the voice interrupts again.

Dante nods. He wants to offer his opinion of Birmingham, but checks himself, trying to find the right gear in his mind and an appropriate vocabulary with which to survive the very beginning of this journey. Eliot speaks again, his words softened by a constant wheeze. 'I went to Birmingham. In the fifties. The city suffered in the war. But the people have spirit, no doubt? All working-class cities have spirit, at least.'

'I guess so.'

'And your journey?'

'Ecstatic. I think escapes are.'

Eliot smiles. 'Yes, quite. Would you like a cigarette?'

'Cheers.' He reaches forward to accept the cigarette from Eliot. It is long and bound in black paper. Their fingertips touch and Dante tenses, before Eliot's hand withdraws to rest beside the ashtray. For a moment he admires the small gold hoop around the cigarette's filter before slipping it between his teeth.

'They are Russian. Black Russian cigarettes,' Eliot says, his stare making Dante glad of the dark.

'Cool.'

'I would offer coffee, Turkish coffee, of which I am fond, but Janice is frightened.'

Dante lights his cigarette, glad of the distraction between his lips, and he feigns a smoke-in-the-eyes frown to conceal his unease. 'Frightened?' he asks, amplifying his voice to conceal the squeak that is ready in his throat.

'Yes. Never comes down anymore, if she can help it. It's a shame. I miss her scent down here and her legs. She has good legs, wouldn't you say?' Dante sniffs and offers a grin that immediately begins to ache on his face. 'And what a mouth,' Eliot adds, slurring his words. 'Would a young man like to taste that mouth?' The skin stiffens across the bones on Dante's face and his mouth dries out. A wry smile forms on Eliot's thin lips. 'Don't be shy,' he says, but an awkward silence begins and Dante looks away, unable to bear Eliot's stare any longer. Was it mocking?

'Every researcher I've had, Dante, has swum in murky water.'

A quickening sense of importance pulses through him. 'Yeah, I'm really excited about the work.'

Eliot nods and considers the end of his cigarette. 'And you have much to read. Before we can begin the real work.'

'Read?'

'You read a great deal?'

'Yes. I know Banquet inside out. In fact I've lost count of how many times I've read it.'

'Thank you. But we must go beyond Banquet. Much further, into times and places I've discovered since that enthusiastic apprenticeship was written. I have quite a collection of, shall I say, rare material. I know it will interest you and it's necessary to complete the canvas. The oils may be a little dark at first, but the final portrait, I'm sure, will astonish you. Banquet has moments, but is rather innocent. Wouldn't you agree?'

He feels trapped. The gloom presses against him, shrinking his body and making his head feel heavy, while Eliot's eyes eat at every twitch that disturbs his face. 'I, I don't know about that. I mean, of course I will read anything you suggest. I'd like that. But I find it hard to fault anything in Banquet.'

'Your loyalty is touching in an age of fads, but it was written in the early fifties, Dante. Much has happened since. And it has been a long walk before nightfall.' Eliot finishes with a smile he seems uncomfortable with. 'A Long Walk Before Nightfall' was the last CHAPTER – the tragic chapter – in Banquet.

When Eliot rises from behind his desk, Dante notices his shoulders are hunched and his limbs seem especially thin beneath the crumpled shirt and grubby trousers. He extends his hand toward Dante, as if a trial has been passed – a grin stretching his broad mouth, tensing the little knots of muscle at the sides of his jaw.

Standing up, Dante accepts the hand and is surprised by the strength in Eliot's grip and the dry texture of his palm. 'Thank you, Mr Coldwell,' he says, suddenly relieved and unable to conceal his pent-up emotions any longer. 'Thank you for, for everything.'

Eliot nods, but looks past Dante, in such a way as to acknowledge thanks but prohibit further praise. 'Call me Eliot. I think formality is a hindrance.' He moves from behind his desk and coughs. 'Some fresh air. I feel a stroll to the pier is in order.'

They leave the office and walk through the basement corridor to climb the steep and narrow staircase to the foyer. Remaining quiet, Dante is content to study Eliot and think on what he should say. He wants his conversation to be careful and measured, like Eliot's, who now pauses by the secretary's door and listens to the sounds of her keyboard clatter with something approaching sly amusement on his face.

In the sunlight that passes through the reception windows, Dante then notices, with a slight shock, the abrasions on Eliot's skin. There are scores of white nicks interwoven within the seasoned grain of his face. His treacle-coloured forearms are also marred with pink slits of scar tissue, and around either wrist he spots what looks like a ring of tender flesh. As if sensing his scrutiny, Eliot tucks his hands inside his trouser pockets. And watching him walk to the front door, Dante reflects that there is none of the leisurely elegance he remembers about his grandfather's walk, rather something tired in the way Eliot moves. Maybe it's nerves, he thinks. He's pissed and nervous. But in and around his pale-blue eyes, set wide apart in the leathered face, with pupils ringed by burnished gold, he senses a hard quality too; something reminiscent of the cruelty in his Maths teacher's eyes.

They leave the foyer in silence, saunter down the stone steps and cross the gravel drive. In the mouth of the open gate, Dante turns his head to follow a quick movement behind the first-floor office window, and sees the stiff shape of Janice Summers fold away from sight. Immediately, an odd smile appears on Eliot's mouth, as if he knows she is on lookout, but the smile is not warm. Instead, it seems full of delight; a revelling in something unpleasant. 'Don't worry about her, Dante,' Eliot says, looking across the road at the ruined castle. 'She is a silly and vain creature, if not a beautiful one.'

Eliot moves to the other side of the road, neglecting to watch for approaching cars. Something reminiscent of Tom: the careless assurance that a higher force has blessed him at birth and will endeavour to preserve him, forever. Eliot then peers through the spiked fence, encircling the landlocked side of the castle, and surveys the battered stone with its gaping rends and stubborn peaks.

'Great castle,' Dante mutters.

While flicking a finger across the bars of the fence, Eliot cuts him short. 'Not a castle, Dante. A bishop's palace and the home of many an atrocity. The good Christians hanged and burned each other here over pitiful interpretations of the scriptures. It was Catholic to begin with before a Protestant infestation.'

'You're not keen on Christians then.'

Eliot snorts. 'Interesting rituals, but full of weeds. The whole faith. Hypocrisy and superstition, ceremony and apparatus. What use are they?' Unsure whether he should answer, Dante stays quiet, suspecting his silence interests Eliot more than his opinions. 'You shall find out more about true mystics,' Eliot adds, and bows his head away from Dante's eager eyes.

'Like the Moslem Sufis,' he ventures. 'Brahmins, Taoists and Buddhists. I especially like that part in Banquet. And what you said about higher magic.'

With his back to Dante, Eliot speaks over his shoulder. 'What an apostle you would have made. Be patient, though. There will be time enough for talk on these matters.'

'Sure,' Dante replies, crestfallen and hoping to crack the code on when to talk and when to listen.

'Have you been on the pier yet?' Eliot asks, turning his tired face to the sea.

'Yes, this morning.'

'Fair in summer, Dante. But you should see it in the wet season.'

Dante nods, trying to assume a serious posture. What was the 'wet season'? Winter? He did not entirely like the way Eliot had emphasised those words, widening his mouth to issue them, with the first flicker of anything resembling real emotion on his face. 'The wet season?' he probes, fishing a Marlboro packet out of his jacket pocket, which Eliot refuses with a leisurely waft of a hand.

'This little picturesque town can become quite dramatic in the wet season. You should come here at night, when the sea is enraged. I often used to. I felt close to something powerful.' This is more like it, more in line with what he enjoyed in Banquet about the godlike and visionary quality inside man. The 'wet season'. He begins to like the sound of it; a song title maybe.

As they stroll down the empty pier, Eliot squints up at the sun, and begins to rub his cheeks and the contours of his weathered face. He looks like he hasn't been sleeping well, and Dante realises it will take time to accustom himself to the man's enigma. Thinkers can be strange creatures after all, he decides, and a man like Eliot, who has done and seen so much out of the ordinary, is bound to be a little weird.

He wanders to the end of the pier, in silence beside Eliot, and stands before the small tower and ladder that rise from the wall to overlook the harbour. 'Beautiful day,' he says finally, to break another long silence, but Eliot doesn't reply and remains preoccupied. Dante sits down and fishes for another cigarette.

'Don't be alarmed by me,' Eliot eventually says, staring at the sky. 'By my moods. I am quite a chameleon they say.' He turns and looks down at Dante, who tries to smile. 'What an expressive face you have.'

'Heart on my sleeve.'

'A virtue. The last remnant of innocence. The unclean like that.'

'What?'

Eliot shakes his head, as if the remark is of no importance. 'Your colleague, Beth, will want to see you right away.'

Dante nods. 'Yeah, you mentioned her in your letters.'

'And?'

'She sounds great.'

'She's unique,' Eliot murmurs, his thoughts wandering again until, by a conscious effort, he forces his mind to recall their conversation. 'Beth. Yes. She wants to meet you on Friday. There is an orientation. It will be suitable. Bring your friend too. She is so excited about meeting both of you. I'm very busy at the moment and Beth will have to guide you through our work. To which your presence is vital.' For the first time that day, Eliot looks relieved, and suddenly keen to have Dante sitting at the end of the pier.

'What exactly will I be researching?'

Eliot looks away and mumbles something he doesn't hear.

'Pardon?' Dante asks.

'She'll show you. Beth has all the answers,' Eliot replies, with a hint of bitterness, perhaps, but Dante can't be sure.

'The Orientation you mentioned. What is it? Do we bring wine?'

Eliot totters on the spot, utterly self-absorbed again, leaving Dante to suspect his questions are distracting the man from an important train of thought. Already, he is annoying his idol.

'No,' Eliot eventually says, with a dismissive sigh. 'It's nothing more than a gaggle of faculty members and staff in Younger Hall. You will find it in the Quad, where the guests will be discussing the coming academic year. Which they all look forward to. You will see a few fools, I warrant.'

'Right,' Dante says, feeling the first signs of fatigue in Eliot's company, manifesting as a crease of pain behind his eyes.

'It is important we form a certain understanding, Dante.'

'About the work?'

Eliot nods. 'I'm tied up most of the day with the new book and what have you and, although I am not insensitive to your need for information, I must beg a small favour.'

'Sure.'

'For the moment I would like you to become familiar with Beth. She knows how things stand. But you must not come to the school unless I call you, and I am afraid my home must remain strictly private.' He looks at Dante, but can't meet his eye for long. 'You know what it's like. It must be the same with your music. A man needs solitude to contemplate. His own space. I do not, I cannot, tolerate disturbances from anyone.'

'Of course. I wouldn't dream of interrupting your work. I have the luxury of time, and there's the reading list. Just give me a shout when you're ready.'

Eliot smiles with relief. Feeling deflated, Dante presumes Eliot is wary about the hell-raising reputation of rock musicians. St Andrews is a conservative place; he makes a mental note to keep an eye on Tom.

'Can I ask you a frank question, Dante?'

'Yeah.'

Now Eliot is agitated and speaks more quickly. 'What are your thoughts on sacrifice?'

He thinks about the question. It confuses him. 'In what context?'

'Let's say, to rid yourself of sentimentality to explore . . . No, to satisfy. Yes, to satisfy an extreme appetite.'

'Well, in a way I have already experienced that. I put my music before anything.'

'So you are saying you would give yourself to a higher purpose?'

'I don't know about that. I just hope our music will come to something, eventually. That it'll mean something to a lot of people. We've pretty much sacrificed everything for the band.'

'Admirable,' Eliot says, impatient, dissatisfied. 'But I sense a reluctance.'

'For what?'

'Real sacrifice. What if someone stood between you and . . .' Eliot stops. He looks at Dante with what appears to be sympathy. What is he talking about? And does he feel sorry for him? Does he think him stupid and unable to understand a philosophical question? Feeling out of his depth, Dante looks at his boots.

'I only ask because I need to understand how you will feel about me. There have been victims in my life, Dante. There are things you don't know. Some say I am responsible for the deaths of several people during my travels. Did I have the right to push companions beyond their tolerance? Is that right? Using people on the mere and improbable chance that I could find my own enlightenment?' But Eliot seems dispirited as he says this, losing his enthusiasm like a man reciting old platitudes that once served him well, but in which he no longer believes.

Dante looks up, eager for the chance to make his hero feel good. 'I think everyone is guilty of manipulation to some degree, Eliot. And the men who died in the last chapter of Banquet wanted to be there. Before the ceremony, you warned them about what they might see after taking the drug. Surely their deaths were reactions to the hallucinogens.' Dante grins, unsure of himself. What has he just said? He doesn't want Eliot to think him callous, but can't think of anything else to say. The man confuses him, intimidates him. And all he wants is to be liked by Eliot, who now regards him: thoughtful, impressed perhaps, even grateful, or is it just pity in the old man's blue eyes?

Eliot smiles. 'Maybe you have already excused me.'

Whistling and suddenly more animated, as if he has arrived at an important decision, Eliot paces about near the edge of the pier. He pauses by the little tower, looks into the sky and quotes a verse of something unfamiliar to Dante, in a tone of voice that sounds like a mocking, triumphant affront to the beautiful view of St Andrews harbour. It is the same tone Eliot used back by the castle when he was disparaging Christians. But there is something in the man's voice that penetrates Dante, to stir a dark melody inside him, something disquieting but seductive:

'Dead loves are woven in his ghastly robe;
Bewildered wills and faiths grown old and rotten
And deeds undared his sceptre, sword, and globe,
Keep us, O Mary Maid,
What time the King Ghost goes arrayed.'

After the brief performance, Eliot places a hand, gently, on Dante's shoulder. 'These are difficult times we have. Strange times. And you've come a long way, I know. Because you knew I needed help. I thank you.' And as Eliot turns and begins the walk back to the shore, Dante stands behind him, baffled, and thinks he hears the great man say, 'Forgive me,' but he isn't sure.