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September 29 - October 13, 2023
‘Simplicity, Humility and Charity’? Try ‘Venality, Duplicity and Vanity’.
THE WELL. The town may be changed, But the well cannot be changed. The I Ching or Book of Changes
Love had arrived in a form he didn’t recognise, which was doubtless why he’d become aware of the danger too late to head it off.
Nine in the third place means: When tempers flare up in the family, Too great severity brings remorse. The I Ching or Book of Changes
The long-delayed realisation that she was in love with her work partner had burst in upon Robin Ellacott the previous year upon finding out that he was having an affair he’d carefully concealed from her. At that point, Robin had decided that the only thing to do was to fall out of love, and it was in that spirit, a few weeks later, that she’d agreed to a first date with Ryan Murphy. Since then, she’d done her utmost to keep an inner door firmly closed on whatever she might feel for Strike, hoping love would wither and die for lack of attention. In practice, this meant turning her thoughts
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and for the very first time in their adult lives, it occurred to Strike that his sister’s determination to cling to stability and her notion of normality, her iron-clad refusal to dwell endlessly on the awful possibilities of human behaviour, was a form of extraordinary courage.
Lucy stared at him for a few seconds in blank astonishment. ‘I’ve waited years to hear you say that. Years.’
The inferior thing seems so harmless and inviting that a man delights in it; it looks so small and weak that he imagines he may dally with it and come to no harm. The I Ching or Book of Changes
Strike was a mentally resilient man who’d survived plenty of reverses in his life, not least the loss of part of his right leg. One of the tools of self-discipline he’d forged in youth and honed in the army was a habit of compartmentalisation that rarely failed him, but right now, it wasn’t working. Emotions he didn’t want to feel and memories he generally suppressed were closing in on him, and he, who detested anything that smacked of self-indulgence, travelled back towards Denmark Street brooding so deeply that he barely registered the
Charlotte, on the other hand, was profoundly unhappy, and Strike suspected he was the only person who truly knew the depths of her misery. The surface of Charlotte’s life might look glamorous and easy, because she was extraordinarily beautiful, and came from a rich and newsworthy family, but her real value to the gossip columns was her instability.
‘So… want a drink? Or dinner? Or whatever?’ He looked down at the cellophaned tuna in his hand. He remembered the cleavage. He’d given up smoking and takeaways. Robin was cooking dinner for Ryan Murphy. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Why not?’
‘So I can put down Cormoran Strike as a Brexiteer, can I?’ ‘You can fuck off, is what you can do,’ said Strike, and he left the journalist chuckling behind him.
In friendships and close relationships an individual must make a careful choice. He surrounds himself either with good or with bad company; he cannot have both at once. The I Ching or Book of Changes
For youthful folly it is the most hopeless thing to entangle itself in empty imaginings. The more obstinately it clings to such unreal fantasies, the more certainly will humiliation overtake it. The I Ching or Book of Changes
The correct place of the woman is within; the correct place of the man is without. The I Ching or Book of Changes
Once again, the fact that she was unavailable, and likely to be so for the foreseeable future, made him realise just how much the sound of her voice generally raised his spirits. He was ever more conscious of how much he, the most self-sufficient of men, had come to rely on the fact that she was always there, and always on his side.
Colonel Graves assumed the stolid, wooden expression of the average upper-class Englishman when confronted with a show of open emotion. Nicholas took refuge in sweeping cake crumbs off his jeans. Phillipa merely stared stonily at the teapot.
He’d had enough experience of both kinds of misfortune to know that there was a vast difference between feeling yourself a victim of random strokes of fate and having to accept that your troubles had been brought about by your own folly.
as he walked back towards Holborn Tube station, he vowed to himself that this would be the last time, ever, he risked his own privacy or career for a pointless affair undertaken to distract him from thoughts of Robin Ellacott.
But every relationship between individuals bears within it the danger that wrong turns may be taken… The I Ching or Book of Changes
Strike couldn’t have said what he was feeling, except a dim surprise mixed with some ghostly vestige of what he’d once felt for her, resurrected by the sorrowful voice he’d sometimes heard at the end of their worst fights, when even Charlotte’s ineradicable love of conflict left her spent and atypically honest.
Strike thought he knew what was going on behind Saxon’s tiny hazel eyes. Occasionally, when people in the grip of obsessive resentment were pouring out their ire and grievances, something in them, some small trace of self-awareness, heard themselves as others might, and was surprised to find they didn’t sound quite as blameless, or even as rational, as they’d imagined themselves to be.
Nine at the top… There is drinking of wine In genuine confidence. No blame. But if one wets his head, He loses it, in truth. The I Ching or Book of Changes
Charlotte’s swerve from kindliness to vehement recrimination and threats came as no surprise to Strike, who’d endured her mood swings for years. Clever, funny and often endearing, Charlotte was also capable of fathomless spite, not to mention a self-destructive recklessness that had led her to sever relationships on a whim or to take extreme physical risks. Various psychiatrists and therapists had had their say over the years, each trying to corral her unpredictability and unhappiness into some neat medical classification. She’d been prescribed drugs, ricocheted between counsellors and been
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in Charlotte’s telling, whenever she was drunk or angry, he was a monster of unparalleled sadism. Six years since the relationship had ended for good, Strike had come to see that the unfixable problem between them was that he and Charlotte could never agree what reality was.
Six in the third place means: Contemplation of my life Decides the choice Between advance and retreat. The I Ching or Book of Changes
He knew why Charlotte was taking things this far: she’d at long last admitted to herself that Strike wasn’t ever coming back. For nearly six years she’d believed the craving she couldn’t eradicate in herself lived on in him, too, and that her beauty, her vulnerability and their long, shared history would reunite them, no matter all that had gone before, no matter how determined he was not to return. Charlotte’s flashes of insight and extraordinary ability to sniff out weak spots had always had something of the witch about them. She’d correctly intuited that he must be in love with his business
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The heart thinks constantly. This cannot be changed, but the movements of the heart—that is, a man’s thoughts—should restrict themselves to the immediate situation. All thinking that goes beyond this only makes the heart sore.
Strike despised self-pity. He’d witnessed serious poverty, trauma and hardship, both in the military and during his detective career, and he believed in counting your blessings.
Robin, he remembered, had been wearing a blue shirt. They’d drunk Rioja and laughed together, and waiting upstairs had been those two bedrooms, side by side on the top floor. Everything, he thought, had been propitious: wine, sea view, both of them single, nobody else around to interrupt, and what had he done? Nothing.
The final hand had been played and Charlotte had been wiped out, with nothing more to bet and nowhere to find credit.
Bit of a fucker this, Diddy.
he’d never again need to fear hearing terrible news, because the news had come. A similar, shameful trace of relief was twisted in among his conflicting emotions now: the worst had happened, so he need never again fear the worst.
Could he have stopped it happening? Yes, probably, but at what cost? Ongoing contact, escalating demands and pleas to reunite with a woman who lived half addicted to her own pain. He’d long since abandoned the hope of any possibility of real change in Charlotte, because of her adamantine resistance to any succour but drink, drugs and Cormoran Strike.
His one unfailing refuge and distraction in times of trouble, ever since he could remember, had been to detangle and unravel, to try and impose order on the chaotic world, to resolve mysteries, to scratch his persistent itch for truth.
I want a good person for a change, Charlotte. I’m sick of filth and mess and scenes. I want something different. Would Robin kill herself over you? Of course she wouldn’t. She’s got more bloody sense. Everything we had, everything we shared, and you want someone sensible? The Cormoran I knew would have laughed at the idea of wanting someone sensible. Don’t you remember? ‘Suns rise and set, but for us there’s one brief day then one perpetual night. So kiss me a thousand times…’ I was a messed-up fucking kid when I quoted that at you. That’s not who I am any more. But I’d still rather you’d
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Some mysteries were eternal and unresolvable by man, and there was relief in accepting that, in admitting it. Death, love, the endless complexity of human beings: only a fool would claim to fully understand any of them.
He forgave the teenager who’d pursued a destructive force because he thought he could tame it, and thereby right the universe, and make all comprehensible and safe. He wasn’t so different from Lucy, after all. They’d both set out to refashion their worlds, they’d just done it in very different ways. If he was lucky, he had half his life to live again, and it was time to give up things far more harmful than smoking and chips, time to admit to himself he should seek something new, as opposed to what was damaging but familiar.
She was shouting “I love you” at the guy.’ Vivienne’s expression was disgusted. ‘Can you imagine? But thank God he just walked away.’ ‘Yeah,’ said Robin. ‘Thank God.’
Robin knew she was looking into the authentic face of fanaticism. Something rigid and alien lived beneath the skin of the human being facing her, something that couldn’t be argued with.
KEEPING STILL means stopping. When it is time to stop, then stop. The I Ching or Book of Changes
Both were in very inconvenient positions in which to hug, especially as Strike still had his seat belt on, but neither let go for several long minutes. Strike gently rubbed Robin’s back, and she held him in a tight grip, occasionally apologising while his shirt collar grew wet. Instead of recoiling when he pressed his lips to the top of her head, she tightened her hold on him.
I should’ve gone then, but I didn’t think I had enough to leave… sorry, I don’t know why I keep c-crying…’ Strike sat down next to her on the bed and put his arm around her again. ‘Sorry,’ she said, sobbing as she leaned into him, ‘I’m really sorry—
There might be an edge of hysteria to Robin’s laughter, but Strike, who knew the value of humour in the wake of horror, and the necessity of emphasising that Robin had rejoined the outside world, continued to fill her in on what had been happening with the agency while she’d been away, until the woman from the hotel knocked on the door again, this time carrying soup and sandwiches.
He then did some wholly unnecessary rearranging of his personal effects, put his phone on to charge and hung up his jacket, taking care to clatter the hangers together as he did so: nobody could accuse him of sitting in a chair, listening to the shower and picturing his business partner naked.
Robin stirred, and groped in the darkness for his hand. Finding it, she squeezed. ‘I knew you were there,’ she murmured drowsily, half-asleep. ‘I knew you were there.’ Strike said nothing, but continued to hold her hand until, five minutes later, she gave a long sigh, released him, and rolled over onto her side.
Going out and coming in without error. Friends come without blame. To and fro goes the way. On the seventh day comes return. It furthers one to have somewhere to go. The I Ching or Book of Changes
Now it is the time of struggle. The transition must be completed. The I Ching or Book of Changes
Nine in the fourth place means: Joyousness that is weighed is not at peace. The I Ching or Book of Changes
There are secret forces at work, leading together those who belong together. We must yield to this attraction; then we make no mistakes. The I Ching or Book of Changes
