The Orpheus Trail by Maureen Duffy

my works ye mighty and despair,” as the poet said.’
    He had lost me again but once more I didn’t say so. I wasn’t sure what I felt, when the papers were full of the dead and maimed, about the loss of inanimate stone, crystal, gold, pots and weapons, things that don’t bleed. Or so I thought.
    ‘I’m worried about Jack.’ Hilary and I were having a quick drink in the Pier Hotel, to give me some Dutch courage before I took her home to meet Caesar. ‘He’s making what I think are very tenuous connections and then jumping to rather bizarre conclusions.’
    ‘How do you mean?’ We were fighting our way through a disgustingly typical pub lunch of soggy jacket potato over-stuffed with cheddar and coleslaw.
    ‘I’m sorry about the food.’
    ‘Don’t worry, I’m used to it. At least this is hot.’
    The day was bitterly cold with an arctic wind off the sea that the forecast had warned might bring flurries of snow. ‘He thought the lamp you restored from the grave was like some ancient fire altar. That was the first odd thing. Then he thought the toys that were found with the boy’s body after the pier fire were the toys of Dionysus. I think that’s what he said. He’s seeing mysteries everywhere and if he starts saying so in public, or to the press, we’ll have hordes of nutters converging on the town.’
    ‘I’d like to have a quick look at the pier before we go to your house,’ Hilary said tactfully. ‘Would that be a nuisance?’
    So I found myself back at the cordoned-off entrance, only there were no police on duty now. Instead, flowers and offerings of toys had been heaped up by the barrier.
    ‘We never used to do this sort of thing.’ Even to myself I sounded like a grumpy old fogey.
    ‘Maybe we didn’t need to; there were other ways to express a feeling of community. I remember my mother saying that when she was young if somebody in the street had died everyone drew their curtains or blinds at the time of the funeral as a mark of respect.’
    ‘Straw up stret,’ I said. ‘In Victorian times the cobbles under the horses’ hooves were muffled with a layer of straw for a funeral.’ I was glad to be able to contribute a bit of information from my own specialism but I didn’t know why I had to keep my end up among these experts on ancient civilisations, and felt shut out of the camaraderie there seemed to be between Jack and Hilary. Somehow they made my own work seem frivolous, irrelevant.
    ‘Look,’ Hilary said pointing to a group of toys on their own apartfrom the flowers, plastic soldiers and racing cars. ‘Aren’t those the things that were described in the newspaper? You would have thought that the police would have wanted to hold on to them for forensic tests.’
    ‘Surely those are new,’ I said going closer. ‘They’re not burnt or damaged as they would be if they were the originals.’
    ‘I suppose somebody thought it would be comforting for the boy’s spirit.’
    ‘But what’s that in the middle, that rod that has a skein of wool round it and something stuck on the top?’
    ‘It’s a whole fennel,’ Hilary said. ‘Now that really is weird. It reminds me of a Halloween pumpkin head on a pole with a face cut in it.’
    ‘No doubt Jack could give us an equally weird explanation.’
    ‘Perhaps we should ask him. Can you remember all the things in this group?’ She looked up at me. Her face was pinched and she shivered slightly.
    ‘Come on. Let me take you to my house and warm you up.’ I took her arm and turned away from the pier. Caesar behaved impeccably, allowing himself to be stroked, and brushing his black sinuous length against her legs as she sat on the sofa. I had gone to town on a choice of tea and a lemon drizzle cake from the local organic shop. I wished the fire was a real one but the mock logs glowed with their electric flicker and their emanation of convenience comfort.
    ‘Goodbye Caesar,’ Hilary said as she got up to leave. He stared up at her from