Whispers Under Ground

spotted Lesley heading for the stairs up to her room.
    ‘Lesley,’ I called. ‘Wait up.’
    She stopped and looked at me, her face a mask of dirty pink.
    ‘Come and have dinner,’ I said. ‘You might as well, otherwise it will just go to waste.’
    She glanced up the stairs and then back at me. I know the mask itches and that she was probably dying to get up to her room and get it off.
    ‘I’ve seen your face,’ I said. ‘So has Molly. And Toby doesn’t give a shit as long as he gets a sausage.’ Toby barked on cue. ‘Just take the fucking thing off – I hate eating on my own.’
    She nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said and started up the stairs.
    ‘Hey!’ I called after her.
    ‘I’ve got to moisturise, you pillock,’ she called back.
    I looked down at Toby who scratched his ear.
    ‘Guess who’s coming to dinner,’ I said.
    Molly, stung perhaps by the amount of takeaway we ate in the coach house, had started to experiment. But tonight, probably for comfort, she’d reached back into the classics. All the way back to ye olde Englande in fact.
    ‘It’s venison in cider,’ I said. ‘She had it soaking overnight. I know because I went down looking for a snack last night and the fumes nearly knocked me out.’
    Molly had served it up garnished with mushrooms in a casserole dish, with roast potatoes, water cress and green beans. The important thing from my point of view was that it was steaks – Molly could be very old-fashioned about things like sweetbreads which I might add are not what a lot of you think they are. After you’ve attended a couple of fatal car accidents, offal loses its appeal. In fact I’m amazed I’ll still eat kebabs.
    Lesley had her mask off and I didn’t know where to look. There was a sheen of sweat on her forehead and the skin on her cheeks and what was left of her nose looked pink and inflamed.
    ‘I can’t chew properly on the left side,’ she said. ‘It’s going to look weird.’
    Venison, I thought, a lovely meat but notoriously chewy – well done Peter.
    ‘Is it like the way you eat spaghetti?’ I asked.
    ‘I eat it the way Italians eat it,’ she said.
    ‘Yeah, face down in the bowl,’ I said. ‘Very stylish.’
    The venison was not chewy, it cut like butter. But Lesley was right, it did look funny the way she bulged it all the way over in one cheek – like a chipmunk with a toothache.
    She gave me a sour look which made me laugh.
    ‘What?’ she asked after swallowing. I noticed that the scars from the latest operation on her jaw were still red and inflamed.
    ‘It’s nice to be able to see your expression,’ I said.
    She froze.
    ‘How am I supposed to know whether you’re taking the piss or not?’ I asked.
    Her hand came up towards her face and stopped. She looked at it, as if surprised to find it hovering in front of her mouth, and then used it to pick up her water instead.
    ‘Couldn’t you just assume that I was always taking the piss?’ she asked.
    I shrugged and changed the subject.
    ‘What did you think of our high-rise recluse?’
    She frowned. I was surprised – I didn’t know she could still do that.
    ‘Interesting, I thought,’ she said. ‘The nurse was scary though – don’t you think?’
    ‘We should have taken one of the Rivers,’ I said. ‘They can tell you’re a practitioner just by smelling you.’
    ‘Really? What do we smell like?’
    ‘I didn’t want to ask,’ I said.
    ‘I’m sure Beverley thought you smelt lovely,’ said Lesley. She was right, mask or no mask, I still couldn’t tell when she was taking the piss.
    ‘I wonder if it’s innate to the Rivers or if all—’ I stopped myself before I said magical folk. A man’s got to have some standards.
    ‘Creatures?’ suggested Lesley. ‘Monsters?’
    ‘Magically endowed,’ I said.
    ‘Well Beverley was certainly magically endowed,’ said Lesley. Definitely taking the piss, I thought. ‘Do you think it’s something we could learn to do?’ she asked. ‘It would make the job a lot easier if we could sniff them out.’
    You can tell when somebody is shaping a forma in their mind. It’s like vestigium , anyone can sense it, the trick as always is to recognise the sense impression for what it was. Nightingale said that you could learn to recognise an individual practitioner by their signare , the distinctive signature of their magic. Once Lesley had joined us I did a blind taste test and found that I couldn’t tell the difference at all – although