The Kings of Eternity (12 page)

She looked at him. “You have a thing about the stars, don’t you?”

He smiled. “I think they represent hope,” he said.

They continued talking long into the warm night.

Chapter Six

London, February, 1935

Looking back on the events from the remove of a year, I am amazed that I can recall the time with such clarity, as if it occurred just a week ago.

In the days following the incident at Hopton Wood, I tried to ease myself back into the routine of my writing life in London. I took up the notes of my latest novel, and the few pages I had managed so far, intending to continue from where I had left off. However, the event I had witnessed, or rather the implications of that event, would not allow me to concentrate on the process of creating fiction. In order to write I needed a clear mind, my thoughts unsullied by extraneous influences or emotions. And, to be perfectly honest, compared to what I had witnessed in Hopton Wood, the fictitious incidents of my lacklustre novel paled into insignificance.

I lay the book aside and began a long, descriptive piece covering the events of that night in Hopton Wood, which I have used extensively when making this more detailed account.

The last person in the world I wished to meet was Carla, and fearing that she might decide to call at the flat, I spent long hours walking around London, visiting galleries and cafés and the occasional public house. I seemed, in those days immediately after Hopton Wood, to exist at a remove from my fellow man. The world continued on its merry way - with the unrest in Spain and the Nazi threat filling the news - but I was no longer a passenger. The knowledge of what had happened that night in the Chiltern hills set me apart from the rest of the human race; I was privy to intelligence so fantastic that, if it were to be made public, then no doubt the entire history of the planet would be affected. I had a secret that made the cares and concerns of everyone around me seem trivial and of no account. It was a secret at once liberating and terribly isolating; yet it had the effect, naturally enough, of making me feel closer to the men with whom I had shared the experience. I counted the days to the weekend, when I would once again accompany Edward Vaughan to Cranley Grange.

On the day my father was due to return from Kent, I phoned him at home. As ever, Mrs Johnson answered. She informed me, without being able to keep herself from weeping, that Mr Harold had been taken into hospital that morning.

Her words thrust an icy fist into my chest. I sat down quickly and asked for whatever news she might have.

She knew very little, save that my father collapsed while in Kent, and that a local GP had advised a period of hospitalisation. He was in a private clinic off Harley Street. I took down the address, called a taxi, and fifteen minutes later was riding north through the grey and crowded streets of London.

I think I secretly feared that the medic’s diagnosis had been in error, and instead of having weeks or even a month or two to live, my father had in fact days. I half expected to find him paralysed in bed and staring death in the face.

Instead, he was sitting in an armchair beside the bed, jotting down notes on a writing pad as if he had all the time in the world ahead of him. I noticed, lying face down on the bed beside him, a copy of
Summer in Kallithéa
. I was moved beyond words to think that, in the little time he had left, he was re-reading my books.

“Jonathon! I was hoping to be out of this damned place before you got wind of what’d happened.”

Although infirm and pale, he seemed in good spirits.

“What happened? Mrs Johnson said you collapsed at Donaldson’s.”

“Something of nothing. Sudden blackout. Nothing to worry about. Sit down, on the bed. There you go.”

I sat as instructed, trying not to smile. There was something at once idiotically brave, and at the same time heart-breakingly tragic, in his refusal to let the sentence of death affect his demeanour.

“Now look here, I’ve been making a few calculations...” He passed me a sheet of paper filled with columns and figures in his neat, copperplate handwriting. I smiled to myself; he was forever making calculations.

I scanned the columns and shook my head. They made not the slightest sense to me. My father harrumphed; it seemed to be his one gripe with me that I had not inherited his aptitude for figures.

At the foot of the page, impressed upon the paper in bold numerals, was the figure: £250,000.

“I’ve been going though my assets, Jonathon. Calculating what I’m worth. The solicitor’s coming down tomorrow to draw up a new will.” He leaned forward and tapped the page. “That’s what you stand to inherit, after tax.”

I knew then that he wanted what he considered best for me, but he was a man of limited imagination: he desired to be kind, and could not see the cruelty of making his bequest known to me.

“I don’t know what to say,” I murmured. How could I intimate to him the pain I felt then, staring down at a sum of money that was at once gross and dangerously liberating?

I wanted to tell him that the money meant nothing, that I would rather have him survive: but even to hint at this would be to evince a sympathy he did not want and would be unable to accept.

He tapped my knee. “Say nothing. What did you expect, that I’d leave it to a dog’s home? Money will buy you time, Jonathon - time to write more. By the way-” he gestured towards the book on the bed, “-re-reading your
Kallithéa
. Tremendously enjoyable. How’s the latest coming along?”

Tears filled my eyes, and my throat constricted. My father was my most uncritical reader; when I put pen to paper, I could do no wrong.

“It’s coming along very well,” I said, then made the excuse that I needed the lavatory and made my escape.

As I returned to my father’s private room, I sought out a doctor and introduced myself. He showed me into his oak-panelled office, sat me down, and told me with a soft-voiced honesty, which I appreciated, that my father had in his estimation approximately six weeks left to live.

After a silence, I managed, “Have you told him?”

“He’s demanded the truth all along, Mr Langham. Your father calls a spade a spade.”

I smiled at this. “Will he be in pain when... I mean-”

“I assure you that, with the aid of modern drugs, his passing will be quite painless.”

When I returned to my father’s room, he was sitting bolt upright in his chair with my novel open on his lap. I stayed for an hour, wanting to tell him about the phenomenon in Hopton Wood, but unable to do so. My father was a severely pragmatic man, and I could not bring myself to attempt to subvert a lifetime of scepticism at the eleventh hour.

As I was about to leave, with the promise that I would visit him again the following day, he laid a hand on my arm to detain me. “About Carla,” he said. “I think she’s the right girl for you, Jonathon. Do the proper thing and marry her, you hear me?”

I smiled, gripped his hand and said goodbye.

I left the hospital and wandered the streets in a daze, heading vaguely south. I took a ‘bus from Trafalgar Square and arrived home just before four, as twilight was bringing in yet another freezing winter night. I sat alone before the fire, stared at the dancing flames, and wondered what was keeping me in London. I had moved to the capital from Kent five years ago, upon the sale of my first novel, thinking that a young writer needed to be close to the centre of the publishing world. But the city frequently dispirited me, with its press of anonymous people, its filth and noise. After experiencing the Chilterns with Carnegie and Vaughan, something within me hankered after the beauty and simplicity of country life.

The telephone rang, and without thinking I picked up the receiver.

“Jonathon.”

“Carla,” I said, sounding less than enthusiastic.

“Where the hell have you been, Jonathon?” She sounded almost hysterical.

“What do you mean?” I answered vaguely.

“You disappeared without saying anything on Thursday. On Friday I ‘phoned. You either weren’t in or didn’t answer, so I called around and you weren’t at home. I’ve been ‘phoning every day.”

“I had to leave London. On business.”

“Without telling me?”

I let the silence stretch. “After how things have been going between us lately, I didn’t think you’d be much bothered.”

“‘Much bothered’? What do you mean by that?”

I said nothing.

“Jonathon? Jonathon, I’m coming round.”

“Don’t waste-” But she had already hung up.

I sat in silence and stared at the fire. I had not bothered to switch on the light, and the flames provided the only illumination. I realised that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and then just as swiftly realised that I was not that hungry. I felt sick to my stomach and had no appetite.

I considered Carla and the idea of life without her, the freedom from routine and the liberating opportunity of being able to meet other women, women perhaps more suitable... And yet, as these thoughts occurred to me, like a drowning man I relived excerpts from my past with Carla, the good times we’d had, the intimacies we’d shared - the emotional connections which made our relationship unique and irreplaceable.

A knock sounded at the door, and I ignored it. I closed my eyes and willed her to go away. It was a measure of my cowardice and immaturity that I could not bring myself to tell her that I wished our affair to end.

The knocking continued, and she began calling my name. She sounded frantic.

In rage I stormed to the door and snatched it open. At the sight of her there, almost cowering on the doorstep, something within me relented.

I stood back and allowed her to enter. She hurried past and entered the lounge, reaching out for the fire as she had done on so many occasions before.

“It’s dark in here, Jonathon. Why haven’t you switched on the light?”

I switched on the light.

I could see, from her blurred mascara, that she’d been crying.

We were standing at opposite ends of the room, opponents in some ill-defined contest of the soul.

She laughed, but she was on the verge of tears. “You’re tanned, Jonathon.”

I looked in the mirror. Sure enough, my face was tanned a deep, unaccustomed bronze.

“Where did you say you’ve been, the South of France?”

“Hampshire. I was walking. The sun reflecting off the snow...” How could I tell her the truth, that an otherworldly light had burned my face?

“Why didn’t you tell me you were going away? I was worried sick.”

“I didn’t think you’d care in the slightest.”

The silence stretched. At last she said, “What’s happening between us, Jonathon?”

“I was wondering the same thing. I thought that perhaps you’d be able to tell me.”

She shook her head. “What do you mean? I thought everything was going so well... Why didn’t you say something?”

“Do you mean on Thursday night, when you were throwing yourself over that creep Ticehurst?”

She narrowed her eyes and shook her head ever so slightly. “Is that it? Thursday night? I was having a good time. Al and I are friends.”

“It looked like you were more than just good friends to me.”

She regarded me for long seconds. “That’s the one thing that I really cannot abide in you, Jonathon. Your insane, childish jealousy.”

“Is that the only thing? I thought you’d be keeping a list.”

“Jonathon, what have I done? This is insane. Everything was going so well. Please tell me what I’ve done wrong!”

I sighed, though really I wanted to bury my head in my hands and weep. “It isn’t just you,” I said. “It’s not your fault. We’re... we’re just two different people, with very little in common, different friends. It isn’t working.”

“I thought you liked my friends? We both love the theatre.” There was a note of desperation or disbelief in her tone which skewered me with guilt.

“I can’t abide your friends, the crowd we were with on Thursday night. It’s a society of mutual sycophants. I’ve yet to meet a friend of yours who comes over as genuine. They’re all playing parts.” I stopped myself before I twisted the knife and admitted that the only reason I claimed to have liked the theatre in the first place was because of her.

She looked stricken. “We needn’t see them. We could go out together, see your friends.”

I felt my throat constrict. I had not wanted her to plead like this. I had hoped that she might read between the lines, admit to me that our affair had not been working for her, too. In short, I had selfishly hoped that she might have made it easy for me.

Only later did I wonder how I might have felt, then, if she had casually accepted or suggested our parting: would I have experienced the egotistical pain of rejection?

She stared at me. “You’ve met someone else, haven’t you?”

“There’s no one else. Honestly.”

She stared at me, then said, “I don’t know whether to be thankful. At least if there was another woman... that would be a reason.”

“Carla, it isn’t working. I’m holding you back. If a couple doesn’t like each other’s social circle... You have your friends, people you’re comfortable with.” I realised I was gabbling, trying to find the words to make her accept that it was over.

Tears filmed her eyes. “It isn’t the physical side of things, is it?”

“That’s wonderful. But it isn’t everything.”

She seemed to deflate. “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this is happening. I thought everything was so good.”

I almost said, “I’m sorry,” but that would have been crass, and also untruthful.

“We’ve been together a year, Jonathon. It seems impossible that it can end just like that. We have so much to talk about.” She opened her eyes wide and stared at me. “We can meet, can’t we? Talk things over?”

I nodded. “If that’s what you’d like.”

She almost shouted, “Wouldn’t you like that? Or would you rather not see me again at all?”

“No. No... there’s no reason why we can’t still be friends.”

She shook her head, slowly, watching me with a gaze I chose to interpret as accusing. “Friends? What an awful, empty word that is after all we’ve shared together.”