Some Here Among Us (12 page)

‘I didn’t know,’ said Toby.

‘ “I didn’t know,” ’ said Chadwick.

‘I didn’t.’

‘Come on, England’s turned his brains,’ said Chadwick, pushing Toby away and dancing on the spot. Chadwick was wearing a navy ski hat and dark sweats – the costume of a cat burglar – but no one, Toby thought, not even the dumbest city cop, could mistake him for anything but a patrician, a member of the elite, here in the world’s marbled capital. They went through the gates into the Arlington Cemetery and began to jog up the hill, around Sherman Drive and under the trees on L’Enfant. Toby ran on ahead. The old guys, as he thought of them, were hardly running at all. They kept stopping to talk, their heads bent under the low-sweeping branches of the oaks on L’Enfant, some of which were still in leaf. He wondered what they were talking about. It must be weird, he thought – dull, detailed, useful – to have known the same person for thirty or forty years or whatever it was. He ran on. He didn’t mind being alone. ‘I’ll come!’ Jojo had said the night before when the morning run was first mooted, but when the dawn came and Race texted Toby to wake him and Toby heard the phone’s twang and looked over at Jojo asleep in the other narrow bed, he decided not to wake her. It could be adduced as an act of kindness. In fact, he didn’t want her to come with him. They had finally made love in that bed, his childhood bed, but there was still something cold between them, a distance. Even the friendly bear on the rug, he felt, childishly, knew that, when Toby’s bare feet touched the floor . . . He jogged on a few more hundred yards then turned back to meet the other two coming up under the avenue, and then they all walked up towards the great mansion on the crest of the hill.

In the distance, in the bowl of the valley, there was already a knot of people amid the waist-high tombs.

‘Who’s over there?’ said Toby.

‘That must be JFK,’ said Race. ‘Is that JFK?’

‘That’s JFK,’ said Chadwick.

‘I’ve never been here before,’ said Toby, looking at the pillared mansion that rose above them.

‘Yes you have,’ said Race. ‘I used to bring you up here all the time.’

‘I don’t remember that.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t. You were two.’

‘What were we doing here?’

‘We’d just arrived in America. I used to come up here a lot.’

‘Why?’ said Toby.

‘I wanted to climb a hill.’

‘Homesick?’ said Toby.

‘I just wanted a hill to climb,’ said Race. ‘I suppose I needed a view. Chadwick brought us up here, and showed us this.’

They looked out over the city which in that cold hour seemed both solid – the marble dome, the great obelisk – and as evanescent as foam on the long tilt to the continental horizon.

‘So what did you think?’ said Toby.

‘What did I think?’ said Race.

He looked at the city.

‘I loved it,’ he said. ‘I looked at that and I thought there was something old and deep here, which also belonged to me. I can’t justify the feeling. And something good, which is always under threat. Internal, mostly. And dark red apples in America . . . I remember that too, when I first got here.’

‘Apples, huh?’ said Chadwick.

‘Very dark red,’ said Race.

‘What were you doing then?’ said Toby to Chadwick.

‘Me? I was at the State Department by then,’ said Chadwick. ‘Was I? No. Yes. I was an intern with Clark Clifford, then I went to State.’

‘Who’s Clark Clifford?’ said Toby.

‘Who’s Clark Clifford!’ said Chadwick. He took a step towards him.

‘Not the headlock!’ said Toby, dancing backwards.

‘Clark Clifford was a great American monument,’ said Chadwick. ‘In fact, the last time I was here we had just buried Clark Clifford down there.’

They looked down the hill at the innumerable tombstones.

‘He’s there somewhere,’ said Chadwick. ‘He was in disgrace by then, but he was still a national monument. So he got an Arlington burial.’

‘In disgrace?’ said Toby.

‘Banking, some banking scandal. Don’t ask. Jesus! Bankers! In his eighties he was taken downtown and finger-printed. All the same, he was the man who got America out of Vietnam. That was the finest deed of his life, he told me.’

‘You actually knew him?’ said Toby.

‘I worked for him a couple of years – 1972, ’74. I was a nobody, an intern. He was the great insider, about 1,000 light years above me in Washington circles. But he used to talk to me sometimes late in the office. I told him I had seen him at a demonstration. I had been
in
the demonstration. “What was the demonstration against?” he said. “You,” I said. That made him laugh.’

‘What demonstration?’ said Toby.

‘Against Vietnam,’ said Chadwick.

‘Nineteen sixty-eight!’ said Race.

‘Sixty-seven,’ said Chadwick.

‘I’m sure it was ’68,’ said Race.

‘He’s a marine biologist,’ said Chadwick to Toby. ‘What does he know? It was 1967. But anyway, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is: Clifford remembered it too. I told him where I’d seen him and he said: “I remember that!” He’d been to all these countries to raise more troops for the war and there were no demonstrations on the whole trip, but then he got to Wellington and there we were. Ten thousand kids standing in the rain. He remembered standing at a window and looking down at us.’

‘I remember that!’ said Race. ‘I remember seeing him at the window.’

‘
You
were there?’ said Toby to Race.

‘We were both there,’ said Race.

‘You guys,’ said Toby.

‘He even made a joke about it,’ said Chadwick. ‘He said there were more people out that window than New Zealand had ever sent to the war. But it was an important moment for him, he told me. He looked down at the crowd and he saw the signs, and for the first time he thought “Maybe we’re wrong.” ’

‘What signs?’ said Toby.

‘Oh, the usual thing,’ said Chadwick. ‘
Make Love not War
and so on. He was this big Cold War warrior, you see, but at that moment he thought “Maybe these kids are
reading the tide of events
better than us.”

‘All You Need Is Love,’ said Race.

‘All You Need Is Love!’ said Chadwick. ‘Maybe that’s what changed his mind. Morgan’s sign.’

‘I painted that,’ said Race.

‘
You
did? I thought Morgan painted it.’

‘I painted it,’ said Race.

‘And I laughed at it,’ said Chadwick.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I just wanted to jeer for some reason. I wanted to bring Morgan down a peg or two. He was so damned aloof. And he turned on me and read me a lecture.
Abdera was the vilest town in all of Thrace
.’

‘I’d forgotten that,’ said Race.

‘I never forgot it,’ said Chadwick.

‘You two,’ said Toby, jogging on the spot.

‘I didn’t know what he was talking about,’ said Chadwick. ‘It would take about two seconds to find out today but we didn’t have the internet then. But I always remembered that –
The town of Abdera was the vilest town in all Thrace
. Of course I was busy with other things and I never really thought about it, but one day I ran into that sentence again.’

‘What
was
that all about?’ said Race.

‘It’s an old Greek play called
Andromeda
,’ said Chadwick. ‘It’s a boy-meets-girl thing. Andromeda is this beautiful girl left chained to a rock by her father to be eaten by the sea-monster. Then Perseus comes by on winged sandals, “cutting a path through the midst of the air”, and he sees her and falls in love and he makes this famous speech: “O love, love, prince of gods and men!” The rest of the play is lost. We only know it existed because it was put on in a town called Abdera and the whole place fell for that speech. It was a famous incident. Everyone went around singing: “O Love, O Cupid, prince of gods and men”. The story was reported about 100
AD by a Roman called Lucian. I’ve read it all up now, you see. I’m a world expert on the fragment of
Andromeda
. The story reaches England in the seventeenth century. Hobbes repeats it, then it turns up in Sterne. Lucian and Hobbes both hated the story. They thought the Abderites were ridiculous: “The whole population went round like pale ghosts yelling, ‘O Love, who lords it over gods and men!” ’ But Sterne – he loved it. He’d have loved to have been there, you can tell: “
In every street, in every house, O Love! Prince of gods and men! The fire caught, and the whole city, like the heart of one man, open’d itself to Love
.” That was Morgan’s theory, you see. The same thing was happening to us. 1967. Love, love, love! And this time it was all around the world. And some people loved it, and other people hated it, and they still do.’

‘Morgan said all that?’ said Race.

‘He must have thought that. He knew the Sterne by heart,’ said Chadwick. ‘He fired it straight back at me.’

‘What did Clifford do?’ said Toby.

‘Well, that day changed his mind, he said. He saw these kids and he thought, “Maybe they’re
reading the tide
better than us.” That was his phrase. But he said nothing when he came back and he was then made Secretary of Defense. And then he came out against the war. Top guy in Pentagon is against war! The president was furious but what could he do? He’d just appointed him. Everything was going crazy that year anyway. Martin Luther King shot. Riots everywhere. American cities burning. This city right here was on fire. You could smell the smoke in the White House. So LBJ gave in. He started peace talks with the Vietnamese. And it took a few years but, you know, we got out of an unwinnable war.’

They stood under the pillars looking at the city.

‘I think there’s something bad going on down there right now,’ said Chadwick.

‘What?’ said Race.

‘I think they’re going to invade Iraq,’ said Chadwick.

‘Jesus,’ said Race.

‘Uncle Chip’ll be pleased,’ said Toby.

‘Uncle Chip!’ said Chadwick.

He stood musing.

‘Then he climbed on the limo roof!’ he said.

‘He jumped on that limo!’ said Race. ‘I didn’t know you saw that.’

‘Who?’ said Toby.

‘Of course I saw it,’ said Chadwick.

‘What limo?’ said Toby.

But they ignored him. They were looking at Morgan on the roof of a long black car beside a rose garden decades earlier.

There was a faint fanfare of trumpets. Toby dived into different pockets of his sweatpants and took out his phone. He spoke for a while, looking first at the horizon, and then he turned to look at Race and at Chadwick while he listened to Candy. The call ended, and they kept watching him.

‘Bernard’s had a fall,’ Toby said.

5

‘Reuben!’ cried Bernard, stretching out both arms.

Toby paused at the door. Bernard, sitting up in bed, wore a bandage on his head at a rakish angle. One of his legs was in a cast: his ancient naked foot peeped from the encasement of plaster at the edge of a light blanket.

‘Reuben!’ said Bernard again. ‘Who did
you
marry?’

‘I didn’t marry anyone,’ said Toby cautiously. He came further into the hospital room. Merle was sitting on a straight-backed, plastic-seated chair beside the bed. Romulus was outside in the corridor on a red vinyl bench, doing his homework.

‘Oh, dear,’ said Bernard. ‘You should marry, you know. “It is not good that man should be alone.” God said that. Or was it Adam? I forget which. My own wife was here a little while ago. Have you seen her about at all?’

‘No,’ said Toby.

‘Your own wife died,’ said Merle. ‘Twenty year ago.’

‘Oh no, that can’t be right,’ said Bernard. ‘I’m sure someone would have mentioned it. Haven’t you seen her at all today? I’m sure
I
have.’

‘No, Granddad,’ said Toby. ‘Merle’s right. Your wife died.’

‘Either you’re wrong, or I’m wrong,’ said Bernard. ‘Perhaps I haven’t been
compos mentis
for quite some time. Oh dear, where is the front door key? I have always made a point of keeping it right
here
.’

He patted the glassed top of the bedside locker.

‘He’s high,’ said Merle. ‘He had another shot. Enough morphine to kill a horse.’

Bernard giggled. ‘I just don’t want to be a nuisance,’ he said. ‘I want to die so I won’t be any trouble to my children. You can drop me off any time, you know.’

‘We’re not dropping you off anywhere, Grandpa. How do you feel?’

‘
Dreadful!
’ said Bernard.

‘Would you like something to drink?’ said Toby.

‘I would,’ said Bernard.

‘Cup of coffee?’

‘I wouldn’t be wanting
that
,’ said Bernard. ‘What’ll we have? Name your poison!’