The Kings of Eternity (14 page)

It was another dark painting, he could see, a nighttime scene with two figures staring up at the stars. They looked lost. He wanted to tell her that the stars were things of beauty, but who was he to gainsay her vision?

She stopped and turned, as if sensing him there.

He knocked on the door. “I’m interrupting. Sorry.”

“Not at all. Please, come in. I’ve finished for the day.” She stood back. “There, what do you think? It needs work, but it’s almost done.”

The figures were dwarfed by the immensity of the heavens. He shook his head. “I don’t know. It could be so optimistic, but somehow it isn’t. Is that how you feel?”

“At times,” she admitted.

“Now?”

She smiled at him. “Not at this exact second, no,” she said in a tone which suggested she wanted to drop the subject.

“Actually, I came round to see if you’d had lunch yet. I thought we might stroll into the village, have something at Georgiou’s.”

She beamed at him. “That sounds like just the thing after a burst of creativity,” she said. “Come into the house while I change into something clean.”

He followed her into the villa and stood in the lounge, admiring her collection of books. She moved into the adjacent bedroom and changed her paint-smeared t-shirt. She had left the door open, and when he glanced through she was pulling a clean shirt over her head; he saw her large, rather sagging breasts, and protuberant belly, and the sight struck him as both fecund and beautiful. He looked away.

Photographs lined the mantelshelf: Caroline and two boys in most of them; the boys were toddlers in some of the pictures, teenagers in others. In all of them Caroline looked radiant and happy. There were no photographs of her ex-husband.

“There we are.” She emerged from the bedroom, smiling. “I feel respectable again. And hungry. I’ve never actually dined at the taverna. Do you recommend it?” They left the house and made their way down the track.

“I’ve eaten there practically every day for the past ten years.”

She looked at him. “Even at Christmas?”

“Even at Christmas.”

“You’ve no family, relatives?”

“Not one.”

“Friends you could spend the holiday with?”

“My friends are scattered all over the place. I suspect that none of them celebrate Christmas, either.”

“Georgiou must be pleased with your custom.”

“After the first six months,” Langham said, “he cut my bill by a third, and it’s only gone up once in ten years. I leave generous tips, though.”

They arrived at the taverna and Langham made for his table. “Not here?” Caroline said, indicating a table beside the water.

He hesitated, and joined her. “This is strange,” he said, sitting opposite from her. “I get a whole new perspective. I usually sit at the table by the door.”

“My God, Daniel, you are a creature of habit.” She laughed. “I thought writers liked variety, change.”

“I had enough of that in my twenties,” he said. “The squid is excellent.”

They ate, and chatted - and Caroline interrupted a story about her New York exhibition with, “God! I clean forgot all about it!”

“What?” he asked, alarmed.

“Guess who came calling last night?”

“I’ve no idea-” he stopped. “Not the journalist?”

“He appeared at the front door around eight and started firing off questions about you. I told him: sorry, you were a friend, and I don’t discuss the personal details of friends with complete strangers. He was damned persistent, Daniel.” She gave a theatrical shiver. “There’s something detestable about the man.”

“That’s what I thought, too. I’m glad it’s not just me. Have you noticed how his face is always expressionless - yet he moves his body in deliberate poses and stances as if to compensate?”

She was nodding. “You’re right. He just stared, but stanchioned his arm against the door frame and leaned in at me.”

Langham shrugged. “Journalistic trick of the trade,” he suggested.

“Daniel... he asked a strange question.”

He nodded, trying not to show his concern. “What?”

“Well, he asked a lot of questions, how long I’d known you, had I met your friends, what I thought of you as a person. Then he asked me if I’d ever read any novels by Christopher Cartwright.” She shook her head. “And, Daniel, he told me to tell you that he’d asked me that. What did he mean?”

Langham felt his stomach turn. He shook his head, feigning ignorance. “I can’t imagine.”

“I asked who he was, and he told me he was called Nicholas Forbes. He said he was writing your biography.”

“At least now I know the full name of my enemy.”

“He’s staying at rooms over Yannis’s post office,” she said, pointing across the waterfront. “He said that if I had any information, I’d know where to find him. I think I shut the door in his face around then.”

“Well done,” Langham said absently. “That explains why he’s managed to catch me here a couple of times. He can see the taverna from his room.”

“Speak,” Caroline said now in low tones, “of the devil. Here he comes. My God, he looks as if the heat’s crucifying him!”

Langham felt a hollowness in his chest at the prospect of the imminent encounter. He wanted to turn in his seat and watch Forbes’ approach; he felt at a disadvantage with his back to the man.

At last the journalist hove into sight and deposited his burdensome hold-all - why did he carry the damned thing about, like Sisyphus? - on a nearby table. He ignored Langham and Caroline, but lifted a chair by placing one finger beneath an upper cross-piece and carried it over to within three yards of where they sat.

He positioned the chair meticulously in the aisle between tables, sat down and stared at his obscene fingernails sunk into the puddings of his stubby fingers.

He looked up. “I’d like to ask you a number of questions, Mr Langham,” he said.

Langham was aware that he’d broken out in a sweat which almost matched Forbes’ for profusion. He drained his wine. Caroline was watching him.

Why did the bastard have to spoil such a wonderful meal, he thought.

“I’d like to know if I’m correct in a few small but very important details.” Forbes produced his spiral-bound note-book and a biro, leaning forward to open the note-book on his ample lap and ready his pen.

“I was wondering if I had your Asian itinerary in ‘90 right,” Forbes said. “Would you mind going through it with me?”

“I don’t see-” Langham began.

Forbes continued, regardless. “You landed in Bangkok in February and stayed there for three months, before moving to Koh Chang, where you remained for just two weeks. Then you crossed into Laos...” He went on: Vientiane, Luang Prabang, then into Vietnam, and from there to China. He gave the duration of stay in each of these places, and to the best of Langham’s recollection he was correct.

It was a
tour de force
of meticulous research designed, he knew, to frighten him: to let Langham know that he had traced his every move.

“Well, Mr Langham, is that substantially correct?”

Langham said, “Your research is better than my memory.”

Forbes looked up. His face held no expression whatever. “The only thing is, Mr Langham, that before ‘90 I have no record of the movements of Daniel Langham. It’s almost as if you didn’t exist before ‘90, and then miraculously sprang into existence.”

Langham signalled to Georgiou for a second glass of retsina. He smiled across the table at Caroline, who was watching Forbes with undisguised distaste, as if she had discovered a slug in her salad.

“I assure you, Mr Forbes, that I did exist before ‘90.”

The journalist shot his cuffs in another of his declarative, theatrical gestures, leaned forward and placed his elbows precisely on his kneecaps. “Perhaps,” he said, “you used a pseudonym, a
nom de plume
, another name?”

“I do know what a pseudonym is, thank you. But I assure you that I was and always have been Daniel Langham.” His voice caught, and he took a quick swallow of wine.

Forbes nodded. He replaced his note-book in the breast pocket of his polyester suit.

“Well, I shall have to go away and do my research a little more thoroughly,” he said. “Oh, and may I ask how the latest novel is progressing?”

“As well as can be expected, under the circumstances.”

“And have you scheduled a time for our little chat about the other matter, perhaps?”

“Not yet. I’ll be busy for another week.”

Forbes nodded his understanding and stood up. He replaced the chair and picked up his hold-all. “I’ll be in touch, Mr Langham.” He nodded to Caroline and struggled off along the waterfront.

Langham mopped his brow and took another long drink. “Daniel,” Caroline said, leaning forward and touching his arm. “What was he talking about, ‘the other matter’?”

Langham said, “He wanted to talk about my ideas.”

“I don’t like him one bit,” she said. “He gives me the creeps. And that thing about there being no record of you before 1990. What was he on about?”

Langham shook his head. “I’m as mystified as you. But he had my Asian trip down pat.”

“He’s disturbing,” Caroline said. “He wants something, Daniel. I don’t know what, but I don’t believe he just wants to do your life.”

Sick to his stomach, Langham merely nodded.

They finished the meal and strolled along the waterfront. Langham felt relieved when they were no longer in view of Forbes’ room above the post office. They talked of other things, but Langham’s thoughts were a million miles away.

They walked around the village and back up the track, and outside Caroline’s villa he tentatively asked if she would care to dine at his place tonight.

She touched his arm. “That’s sweet, really it is. But I’ve had this low-level migraine for days now, and I really should get an early night. Another time?”

“Of course. Fine...”

He walked home, more than a little unsettled by Forbes’ attention, and disappointed at Caroline’s refusal.

She was out when he called the following day, and the day after that when she came to the door she looked so pale and drawn that his first impulse was to ask if he should call a doctor. She insisted that she was okay - another migraine attack, but she had strong pills to counter the worst of the effects, except they wiped her out...

He didn’t see her for another three days, and was wondering whether he should call round again, at the risk of making a nuisance of himself, when she turned up at his villa, bearing a tureen of lamb casserole.

“I hope you haven’t started cooking, Daniel. I owe you a meal.”

“I was just washing some new potatoes. We could have those with the casserole.”

She sat at the kitchen table while he put the potatoes on. He poured her an orange juice and himself a glass of wine. He felt surprised at the degree of his elation at seeing her again. Without her, the world seemed a gloomier place.

“Do you mind if I take a look at your study, Daniel? I’m fascinated by where people work.”

“You’re welcome to look,” he said. “But actually I work on the patio. I just use the study in winter, and then mainly to read. Through here.”

He led her along the passage and opened the door. She stepped inside and looked around. It was a pretty conventional study, a few big, comfortable armchairs, a writing desk with an ancient, battered typewriter sitting upon it, a few shelves crammed with books. He had written in here for a few months ten years ago, before deciding that he preferred the atmosphere of the patio. He didn’t even type his manuscripts up now, but paid a woman in Xanthos to do it on a word processor.

Caroline was kneeling to examine a bookcase. “You like science-fiction?”

“Some of it. The more character-oriented novels.”

“I see you have a lot of Edward Vaughan.”

“You’ve read him?” he said, surprised.

Caroline see-sawed her hand. “One or two of his books.”

He knelt beside her and slipped a Vaughan hardback from the case, the book dusty and foxed. He opened it to the dedication page and read: To Jonathon Langham, Fellow Traveller. He read the first line:
The Interspatial ships were massing on the cusp of Vark space, charging their ion drives for the final assault on the fourth quadrant
. He smiled and replaced the book beside the other uniform editions.

“My God,” Caroline said. “An art book.” She pulled out a big, glossy Thames and Hudson hardback. “Ralph Wellard. You never told me you liked his work.”

“Look,” he said, turning a few pages.

She read, “‘Dedicated To Jonathon, Christopher, and Daniel.’“

She looked at him. “You knew the great Ralph Wellard?”

“He was a friend of my grandfather,” he said. “I met him a few times way back.”

“What was he like? I’ve heard stories. I’ve read he was reclusive, but had a loyal coterie of close friends.”

“He was a very patriarchal, wise man. Softly-spoken, humane, extremely knowledgeable about art and literature and music. Something of a polymath.”

“How did your grandfather know him?”

“They were great friends back in the sixties,” he said.

“And was he reclusive?”

“He guarded his privacy, and hated the intrusion of the press. But I wouldn’t call him reclusive.” He smiled. “I wouldn’t particularly call myself reclusive, but I’ve heard it said about me.”

She was flipping through the book, stilling the pages with her elegant fingers to better examine a print that caught her attention.

She looked at him. “Does anyone really know what happened to him, Daniel?”

“It remains a mystery to this day.”

“Some people say that he staged his own disappearance, so that he could start a new life somewhere, anonymously. Do you think that’s true?”

“His boat was found drifting off the coast of Naples, deserted. The police assumed he’d fallen overboard and drowned. You never know, he might have staged it. He might be living in secrecy somewhere as we speak...”

“He’d be... how old now?”

“Oh...” Langham inflated his cheeks. “I never was any good at figures. When I met him in the seventies, he’d be around fifty. So he’d be knocking on for eighty now.”

“I wonder why anyone would stage their own disappearance?” she mused to herself.