Out of the Sun (37 page)

Hi Harry,

Thought you'd like to know I'm well on the road to recovery and getting barrel-loads of sympathy by telling strangers my stiff leg's a legacy of distinguished service in Vietnam. Should be a great Christmas.

Donna told me about David, so I guess yours isn't going to be so great. What can I say? It's tough. David was a good friend to me. I'm real sorry he's gone. Anything I can do Well, I don't need to say it. You know where I am.

The other reason for writing is I felt sufficiently mobile this week to take a train-ride to Philadelphia. Tracked down Isaac Rosenbaum and tapped him for recollections of our late and loony friend Carl Dobermann. Rosenbaum's a tiny old guy with a face like a monkey and a memory that doesn't set much store by chronology. We had to sift through one hell of a lot of chaff before we turned up any grain.

The long and short of it is that Rosenbaum does remember Dobermann, as a head-in-the-clouds Ph.D. student who suddenly went crazy in the fall of '58. Well, maybe not so sudden, because the kind of rumours David said were running around Hudson Valley the vanishing acts and second sight stuff had already stuck to Dobermann back then. Which proves David didn't make them up. Static electricity was another thing. Dobermann was charged up worse than a nylon turtleneck. Rosenbaum claimed other students actually got shocks off this guy. A bright spark in more ways than one, seemingly.

Anyhow, the bottom line is Dobermann turned weirder and weirder, then went totally berserk one day. Wrecked a couple of laboratories. Had to be strait jacketed off to the asylum. A real men-in-white-suits job. Rosenbaum was put onto clearing up the mess afterwards. Reckoned the labs looked like a German panzer division had been through them. A one-man demolition team was our Carl. After he'd gone, the word was put out that the less said about him the better. Nothing official, but unofficially Dobermann became an off-limits subject.

That's more or less it, bar one tantalizing detail.

Rosenbaum said the mathematics lecturer supervising Dobermann's thesis left right after Carl, low-key and sudden. When he named the party, I realized it could be the connexion with David you'd been looking for. I remember David mentioning the same name when he talked about how he got hooked on higher math in the first place. Could mean nothing, but I thought you'd like to know. Athene Tilson. Ever heard of her?

Feel free to ignore all this if you've lost interest in the subject. It'd be understandable if you had. But I reckoned I owed you one, so I thought I'd make the effort. As for Lazenby, well, we sure cooked his goose, didn't we?

All the best,

Woodrow

Harry did not get round to reading the last paragraph of Hacken-sack's letter properly until he was standing amidst the milling commuters on the southbound platform of Kensal Green station, waiting for the next Bakerloo line train. "Lost interest in the subject?" he murmured to himself, smiling grimly. "No chance, Woodrow." The state of Mrs. Tandy's sitting room was a matter of small consequence now. He did not know what this latest revelation meant. But he knew he would have to find out. That very day.

SIXTY

A winter's morning of frozen stillness slowly revealed itself as the train sped north through snow-patched Essex. Harry breakfasted on black coffee, a micro waved bacon bap and the tangle of his own thoughts. He re-read Hackensack's letter and Slade's note. He recalled as much as he could of the last time he had come this way. He remembered Athene Tilson's words "If you really want to understand higher dimensions, you could do worse than my own foray into the subject' and the inscription in the book she had given him. For Harry, she had written. May you find as well as seek. It had always seemed a strange choice of words. And now the strangeness was becoming sinister.

The Norfolkman reached Ipswich at nine o'clock. It was the same train Harry had travelled up on back in October, so he knew he was in ample time for the Southwold bus. But still he hurried across the footbridge and along the platform towards the exit. Haste was more a state of mind now than any kind of necessity.

Then, as he passed the windows of the buffet on his left, a glimpse of something oddly familiar stopped him in his tracks. A plump figure in a bell-tent raincoat was sitting at one of the window tables, staring out at him as he stared in. Her face was pale as a new moon, her hair bright as flame where a cold lance of sunlight fell upon it. And in her eyes was a startled look that amounted almost to fear.

He pushed open the door and stepped inside. The air was a warm fug of coffee steam and cigarette smoke. At one end of the room, a track worker was caught in the eager embrace of a fruit machine. At the other, beyond a wasteland of empty tables, sat Athene Tilson's housekeeper, dwarfed by a mountainous grubby pink holdall that looked like a Brobdingnagian's cast-off and a cello case sporting more multi-coloured labels than a globetrotter's trunk.

"It's Mace, isn't it?" Harry asked, moving across to her. "Remember me?"

"I remember," she murmured.

"Been away for Christmas?"

"What makes you think so?"

"Well, the bag. And .. . being here."

"I've not been away. I'm going."

"Oh, right. Holiday?"

"I'm going for good."

"Really. Why's that?"

"Ask Athene. It was her decision."

"Sorry?"

"She threw me out."

"You're joking."

"Does it look like I am?" The forlorn ness in her was almost palpable, from the tiny mittened hands cradling her mug of tea to the bitter skittering anguish in her eyes. Assuredly, she was not joking. "Athene gets rid of a lot of things she's had the best out of. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised to be next on the list."

"She .. . sacked you?"

"If you like. But since I was never exactly her employee .. . evicted is nearer the mark."

"I don't understand."

"Who ever understood Athene? Not me, that's for sure. Not even after thirteen years."

"You worked for her sorry, lived with her for thirteen year sT

"Yeh. Unlucky for some, eh?"

"It's a long time, certainly. I'm on my way to see Dr. Tilson now. Do you '

"Don't go." Her face suddenly flushed. She reached up and clasped his forearm. "Please don't."

"Why not?"

"Just promise me you won't."

"I can't do that."

"You have to."

"Not without an explanation."

"The next train to arrive at platform two will be the nine-twelve service to London Liverpool Street," interrupted the station announcer. Mace looked up sharply, then glanced down at her alarm-clock-sized wristwatch. "This train will call at Manningtree, Colchester and London Liverpool Street."

"Your train?"

"I suppose so."

"Where are you going?"

"Not sure."

"Not sure?"

"I mean ... it doesn't matter."

"It must do."

"Not compared with She released his arm and let her hand fall back onto the table. "Take my advice. Don't go to Southwold."

"Why not?"

She looked up at him, her eyes huge and imploring. "Is it true David was your son?"

"Yes."

She nodded. "There's a resemblance. I can see it."

"You knew him .. . quite well?"

"I loved him."

"What?"

"I loved David. Worshipped him from afar. At Cambridge .. . and since. Unrequited passion isn't actually very poetic. More .. . corrosive, as a matter of fact."

"You were at Cambridge with David?"

"Yes." Her eyes unfocused dreamily. "Athene was my tutor. And David's supervisor. You could say she brought us together. And kept us apart."

"I had no idea."

"Why should you?" The London train rattled into the station, but Mace made no move to get up. "Why should anyone?"

Tell me about it." Harry sat down beside her. "I'd like to understand."

"I'll miss my train."

"There's always another."

"That's what my friends said about David. Plenty more fish in the sea. Lots more pebbles on the beach. Pull yourself together; come to a party and pick up a boy. You know? The usual platitudes. And no help at all."

"Why didn't it work out?"

"Not because of my weight, if that's what you're thinking."

"I never '

"I was slim then. Beautiful, some people thought. Positively Pre-Raphaelite." She frowned and raised a hand to her forehead. "Sorry. I've always been over-sensitive. Especially since Well, the fact is David just wasn't interested in me. For a start, I was a musician, not a mathematician. He thought anyone who preferred counterpoint to calculus had to be either perverse or stupid or both. I suppose, looking back, it should have been obvious it was hopeless. We simply didn't have enough in common." She summoned a faint smile. "But I wasn't very level-headed at nineteen."

"Who is?"

"David, for one. Level-headed. Single-minded. And chillingly mature. As well as irresistibly attractive."

"Was there .. . somebody else?"

"Oh yes. There was somebody else. I just didn't know it at the time. I thought he was... unattached. Which made rejection pretty hard to take. So much so that..." She sighed and shook her head. "I proved him right about being stupid."

"How?"

"Gave up serious study. Followed him around. Bombarded him with love poems. Oh, and took up shoplifting. Books and clothes mostly. The psychiatrist said it was attention-seeking. It certainly attracted the attention of the police. And the university authorities. After they'd finished with me, there wasn't much left." She stroked the neck of the cello case affectionately. "Not even a half-decent cellist."

"You must have had a rough time."

She nodded. "All the rougher for being self-inflicted."

"How did you end up living with Dr. Tilson?"

"She'd just bought Avocet House in preparation for her retirement. Needed somebody to look after the place during the week, while she was in Cambridge. I was on probation and didn't have much option. It was either take up Athene's offer or go back to live with my parents. No competition, let me tell you. I'd probably be in an institution by now if I'd gone down that road."

"Are you going back to them now?"

"For a few days. Then ... I don't know."

"But why stay in Southwold all this time? You can't have been on probation for thirteen years."

"I like it there. And I like Athene. She has a ... quality of peace ... that can be quite contagious. I wanted to hide from the world and she wanted to retire from it. It was a sensible arrangement for both of us. I was grateful to her as well, of course. For getting me off the hook. I suppose I didn't realize I was effectively swapping one hook for another."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, living with Athene meant I could still see David from time to time. He wasn't a frequent visitor. But he kept in touch. With Athene, I mean. So, I always had the chance the hope of impressing him. I had this fantasy that when she died, he'd take pity on me and carry me off somewhere. Pathetic, isn't it?"

"I don't think so." Harry smiled at her almost paternally. "We all have fantasies."

"Yeh? Well, mine's over now. David's dead. And I'm not going to be nursing Athene into her dotage. The door of my cosy seaside retreat from reality's just been slammed in my face."

"Why? What was the problem?"

"I must have asked too many questions, I suppose."

"What about?"

"Her recent travels, mostly."

"Travels? I thought she was a virtual invalid. Housebound, I assumed."

"Far from it." Mace chuckled humourlessly. "The arthritis and emphysema seem to come and go at will. They're part of Athene's disguise. She says there's nobody people are less suspicious of than a doddery old woman. Nobody more ignorable. Which is what she likes to be. Ignored. Forgotten. Neglected. Overlooked. Underestimated." She paused. "Perhaps fatally so."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean she was away from home the night David fell ill. Attending a college dinner in Cambridge, she said. But I checked. She wasn't there. She was away quite a lot in September. And she lied about her destination every time. She went away again about a week after your visit in October."

"How long for?"

"A fortnight or so."

"Where did she go?"

"She didn't even bother to lie to me that time. She just .. . declined to say." Mace let out a long slow sigh. "I didn't much care by then. It was the day I'd telephoned the hospital prompted by some kind of instinct, I think and learnt David was dead. Just a few hours later, Athene walked through the door. Quiet, regal, ghostly as ever. A little like death herself. Cold. Remote. Above it all. Like ... a visitor from another planet. She's always had this .. . unearthly quality. I think it's what drew David to her. Not mathematics so much as ... magnetism." Mace's eyes flicked up to meet Harry's. "She was the somebody else in your son's life. Always and for ever. Oh, don't worry. I'm not alleging some bizarre sexual relationship. It was her mind he couldn't resist. I once asked him why he kept coming to see her. I had some frail hope he might say it was an excuse to see me. But instead he replied, with utter sincerity: "Because Athene's the real thing. A mathematician several generations ahead of her time. The most brilliant, original and innovative numerical thinker since Cardano"'

"Who?"

"Gerolamo Cardano. An Italian mathematician of the sixteenth century. I looked him up. He was the discoverer of probability theory and complex numbers whatever they are."

"I've never heard of him."

"Just as most people have never heard of Athene Tilson. "She knows more than she'll let me understand," David said. "But one day, when I've learnt enough, I'll persuade her to unlock her secrets."

"But I thought... she said ... David's work had left her behind."

"The way he told it, he was still trying to catch up."

"Or maybe he had caught up." As Harry's thoughts were doing, with the implications that were beginning to thread themselves between the facts he had so far failed to connect. "At long last."

"How do you mean?"