15th January
Sam and I inspected the patterns in the stars above us.
‘I wonder if Betelgeuse will go supernova in my lifetime,’ I said, looking towards the constellation of Orion.
The hunter, with the dog, Sirius, at his feet, stood poised in the clear, January sky, ready to wallop Taurus between the eyes with his club.
Possibly an unwise plan, I had always thought, but the almost imperceptible movement of the heavens was such that it would be countless millennia before the weapon found its target and countless more while the great bull considered his response.
My eyes tracked across to the star at Orion’s right shoulder. Our village was sufficiently far from any large conurbation to allow good quality dark skies. The red colouration of the star could easily be discerned with the naked eye.
‘I think there may be something to see in Orion sooner than you think,’ replied Sam enigmatically.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘I can’t say more,’ he responded, ‘but it’s all in the book, Swan. … It’s all in the book,’ Sam repeated as he began to walk away from me along the footpath.
I admired the stars for a further few minutes before setting off, in the opposite direction, towards the Dog and Ferret.
As I walked, I thought about Sam: I knew him as a lifelong bachelor who had lived at number eighteen for all of his seventy-six years. I had first met him while he had still been a professional archaeologist.
In those days, I had only seen him intermittently because he had spent many months of each year in the Middle-East or North Africa, involved in archaeological digs.
He had apparently been something of an authority on ancient cultures – in particular their religious beliefs.
During the past two or three years, I had spent more time than most in his company. He was my next door neighbour, and he had taken to calling upon me, randomly and unannounced, about once a week.
One objective of his visits appeared to be a check that my collection of malt whiskies remained in peak condition. He confirmed this by extensive sampling.
Sam had long since detected my boredom with discussions of ancient history and religions, but we had both devoted much of our gardens to vegetable growing, and this, together with the week’s news, often kept us talking for hours during his visits.
‘It’s all in the book,’ had become something of a catch-phrase for Sam: ‘I knew that was going to happen,’ he would often announce as we discussed some turn of world affairs. ‘It’s all in the book.’
Despite this, he would never be drawn on the precise nature of ‘the book’.