The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and other Strange Stories Read Online Free Page B

don’t quite know why.’ She took out one of the booklets and read out the title on its front cover.
    ‘ Alchemical Symbols Explained: Their Application in Modern Science by Ignatius Abney B.A. Oxon. Hyperion Press 1934. I think he obviously printed them privately. I doubt if they were great sellers.’ She picked up another. ‘ Eugenius: or the True Cult of the Race Soul . Oh, dear! Now, wait a minute, here’s something which is more in your line: Matter and Daemon: On the direction of Spirit Force through Physical Objects . Isn’t that a bit like your Feng Shui?’
    ‘No,’ said Heather decisively. ‘Nothing like. This stuff is just weird.’
    After that, the viewing of the house was conducted in a brisk, businesslike way and when Heather asked Alice if the place did not cost a lot to heat she replied ‘Not really’. Two days later the estate agent rang up to tell Alice that Mr and Mrs Billing had made an offer for the house which was not insultingly below the asking price. The Pearmains accepted.

    **

    Heather’s husband, Jack, was a little disturbed to hear that they were buying a house off the Pearmains. He had heard of Mr Pearmain’s exit from the firm and was uneasy about it. Nevertheless, he had felt it best that Pearmain should go because, as he had remarked to a colleague, Pearmain was ‘not fully in tune with the prevailing culture of a leading-edge firm like Stolz.’ Jack Billing had an effortless command of such language which was why he was near the top of the ladder in Marketing.
    When the Billings and their three children moved in to Lime House Heather appropriated Alice’s ‘little office’ as her ‘private space’. She found, as she had expected, that Alice had left the old muniment cupboard behind. This pleased her. Heather, not being a sentimentalist, had decided to sell it. In the meanwhile it had to be moved from where it was because it was trapping all the Chi energies in the room.
    It was some weeks, however, before Heather was able to do anything about her little space because she was so busy arranging everyone else’s. Organising other people’s lives was Heather’s passion in life, which was one of the reasons why she had taken up Feng Shui. (Before Feng Shui she had done counselling, but this had not been a success because she discovered that, strangely, listening rather than advising was thought to be the main task of the counsellor.) Heather’s family consented to her bossiness because they recognised the essential benevolence behind the urge to dominate. Her arrangements, whether of furniture or feelings, were nearly always convenient and comfortable.
    At last one afternoon Heather was able to start work on her own room, bare except for one object, the muniment cupboard. The room needed painting (blue for meditation) and the cupboard needed moving. She opened the door of the cupboard and found, to her surprise, that all the pamphlets were gone from their pigeon holes. Heather had been planning to burn them, but Alice must have anticipated her wishes. The cupboard really needed to be moved out of the room altogether—black was quite the wrong colour for her space—but Heather had no help that afternoon, so she decided simply to shift it from its present position to the opposite corner of the room where it would be less conspicuous. Heather was strong and fit but she had great difficulty in moving the cupboard. It was unusually heavy for its size and on several occasions threatened to topple over. At last it was done; the cupboard was in a place where it would not dominate the whole room. It was not an ideal solution but it would do.
    Heather, exhausted, surveyed the result of her efforts for some time. She speculated that the cupboard would fetch a good sum at auction, four figures certainly, perhaps even five. The carving on the panel was, in its primitive way, remarkable. The faces of Adam and Eve were too worn to be very distinct; it was their attitudes that were so