Earl’s Court, London
21 March 1973
Darling Jed,
Thank you for the photo of the chook palace. I’ve stuck it up on my desk, though I have to keep explaining to everyone what a ‘chook’ is. And wacko for the blow for women’s lib and equal pay at Thompson’s!
The new job is wonderful. I’ve met — okay, taken in a tray of tea to — three authors I adore this week alone! But I could do with a bit of equal pay myself.
Not much else to tell you. There was what I thought was a lovely young man, but he turned out to be the biggest MCP in Europe. He asked me to dinner at his flat and there was this enormous pile of washing-up, and he said, ‘I was going to do this before you cooked dinner, but now you’re here you can do it.’ Can you imagine? And he takes his laundry down to his mum to do every weekend. I’m thinking of giving every likely lad I meet a questionnaire:
Can you cook?
Will you cook?
Will you cook even if there is a female present?
Can you iron your own shirts?
Would you, just sometimes, iron mine too?
If I ever meet a man who says ‘yes’ to all of them, I might even elope. Though not till they make me managing editor.
Love and hugs,
J xxxxxxx
PS If there is nothing quote emphatically nothing unquote between you and Sam McAlpine, why do you need to say so? Also, can he cook and iron? And does he?
RA ZACHARIA
Ra Zacharia stared at the gaunt body on the bed. It was . . . inconvenient.
Ra Zacharia had seen dead bodies before, of course. Death happened in his line of work. But just now, with things so delicate, so much potential so near, a death might be disastrous.
Ra Zacharia subdued the flicker of anger. Anger interfered with harmony with the universe. A body was just a body. He must get rid of it.
When he told the acolytes they must practise silent meditation in their rooms that night, there would be no one to see him wheel the woman’s body along the corridor. And when he asked 23 to dig a hole to plant a tree down by the herb garden, the young man would obey without question. 23 might even understand why the body must vanish. But it was safer, always, to tell people only what they needed to know.
And Elders be blessed that 31 had no relatives to ask questions. If anyone in the community asked, he would simply say that 31 had, like 40, gone to pursue the needs of the Elders elsewhere for the time being.
A pity though, he thought, looking at the wasted face on the bed. He’d thought 31 had potential. But she had not proved strong enough. She had been too old, even at forty-three, to remould her mind and body as the Sacrifice would require.
That was why Scarlett Kelly-O’Hara was so perfect. The child had forced her body far beyond the doctors’ diagnoses. She would want more. She must want more! And that was how he’d trap her, offering her what no doctor ever could.
And the baby! Ra Zacharia felt a smile like a radiant sun. 40 had told him about the new child at River View. A baby, and an even more hopeless case than the girl. So perfectly, wonderfully helpless, hopeless.
What Sacrifice would be more perfect than a baby?
Ra Zacharia smiled down at the body on the bed, his irritation seeping into the ether. With two such Sacrifices so close, 31 was easily spared.