The Kings of Eternity (3 page)

My father had an aversion to the telephone; in fact he disliked all things that smacked to him of modernism: he mourned the passing of the Hansom cab, and would take a taxi only with a grudging reluctance born of necessity.

In consequence he never phoned me; he sometimes wrote - how quaint to receive a hand-written note inviting me to dinner - or, if the matter was more urgent, paid a boy sixpence to deliver a message.

I opened the door to the beaming face of a tousle-haired youth, who thrust a manila envelope into my hand and scooted off.

I returned to the fire and read the stilted message in his meticulous copper-plate hand:

My Dear Jonathon, I have a matter of most urgent import to discuss with you. I apologise if this interrupts your work. If you could join me for lunch at one o’clock, I would be most grateful.

It was signed, with a grandiose flourish - the only excess that he ever exhibited - Harold.

I spent the duration of the ‘bus journey in contemplation of the ‘most urgent matter’ which my father wished to discuss with me. A similar summons before Christmas had transpired to be about nothing more than his concern over my parlous financial situation. A long working life spent in the retail trade - he had over the years built up a profitable chain of haberdashery stores in London and the Home Counties - had narrowed his view of what was important in life: fiscal security was to him a requisite attainment, but it was not a God to which I paid any obeisance. On our last meeting, a fortnight before, I had let slip that my last novel was not selling well. No doubt this fact had vexed him sorely, and he now wished to advise me upon matters of investment.

I would weather his well-meant words with a weary smile; he seemed to be under the mistaken impression that I had money to invest. The advance on my third novel might have covered the lease of the flat for a year, but to fund my day to day necessities I was reliant upon finding the occasional odd job in Grubb Street: book and theatre reviews, pseudonymous articles at two guineas a time on subjects as diverse as archery and the breeding habits of the Indian elephant.

I alighted on Kings Road and hurried through the mist to Templeton Mews. My father employed a housekeeper to cook and clean during the week (at weekends he dined at his club), and it was Mrs Johnson who opened the door and showed me into the lounge.

My father was seated in his high backed armchair at the far end of the long room, overlooking the street.

He must have heard my entry, but made no move to get up.

I pulled a chair alongside his and sat down.

He turned his head to regard me. “Jonathon, how’s Carla these days? Haven’t seen her for months!”

“She’s keeping well. Busy as always. She’s in a new play in the West End. Opens tonight.”

He looked grey, and much older than his sixty-three years. He was a small, thin man, with a refined, aquiline face, steely grey eyes and a moustache at once military and severe. His somewhat martial aspect was a throwback to his beloved Victorian era, as was so much about his character. He was a Tory of the old school, a devoted champion of Baldwin. We had argued politics, briefly and heatedly, in my early twenties, and then steered away from the subject.

Although I found his views anathema, he was a kind and loving father. We had in common a passion of chess, and it was from him that I had gained my love of books: he was a voracious if undiscerning reader - during my teens, shortly after my mother’s death, together we had escaped into the worlds created by the likes of Haggard and Buchan, Doyle and Stevenson.

Now we chatted about Carla. I described the play she was rehearsing at this very minute, and promised to get him tickets.

In the early days of my relationship with Carla, when I had been madly in love, my father had taken a dim view of the woman. Perhaps it was the fact that she was both an actress and half-French - and sometimes played up the Gallic side of her nature - that had so bothered him. She was not a lady, and certainly not an English lady.

Paradoxically, when my relationship with Carla was at its stormiest, my father let it be known that he had quite taken to the girl. Carla was an accomplished actress, and her practised display of daughterly devotion had won him over. More than once he had hinted that she would make a good wife.

“And how’s the book coming along? Sorry to interrupt the writing, and all that. Time’s money, as they say.”

I made some dismissive gesture. “I’m between chapters,” I lied. “It’s progressing.”

He brought both hands down on the arms of his chair, a habitual gesture denoting imminent movement. “Peckish? Fancy a spot of lunch? Mrs Johnson’s prepared a feast. Let’s get to it.”

He waved me on ahead, so that I would not see him struggle from his chair. His gnarled fingers curled like broken cheroots around his silver-topped walking stick, but even with its aid he was breathless by the time he had hauled himself to his feet.

He had always had an upright, ramrod posture, but now he was markedly stooped, hunched around his hollowed chest.

In the dining room we occupied the small table by the window and enjoyed a cold ham salad and an excellent claret. My father kept the conversation light and inconsequential, much to my exasperation. More than once I found myself on the verge of asking him why he wished to see me.

He changed the conversation and began discussing my books, and I knew that he was manoeuvring towards the delicate matter of my finances.

“Halfway through your latest, my boy.” He pointed across the room, to where my novel,
Summer in Kallithéa
, lay open upon an occasional table.

“Enjoying it immensely, of course. Brilliant evocation of Greece.”

I murmured my thanks. He took a genuine pride in the fact that I was a published author: my novels and the anthologies to which I had sold short stories were prominently displayed, and he was forever mentioning me to friends. He often told me that he was anguished - and mystified - as to why I had never succeeded in having a best-seller.

“I’m getting through it rather slowly, of course.” He tapped his temple. “The old brain, you know. I find I can read only for an hour before the concentration lapses.”

“Have you thought of getting away for a while? Somewhere warm, away from this damnable weather. It’d do you the world of good.”

He snorted. “I don’t need the sun, Jonathon. I’ve everything I need here in London. About your books...” He dabbed at his lips with a napkin. “The other day you said you could be doing better. I know you must be worried about that side of things. I just want to reassure you...”

I raised a hand. I had managed to hold body and soul together without going cap in hand to my father: I didn’t resent his offers, but it was a matter of pride that I could survive from the proceeds of my pen alone.

“I’m doing quite satisfactorily.”

Something in his steely gaze stopped me. “Jonathon-” and he reached across the table and took my hand in a grip surprisingly strong, and cold. “Jonathon, you have no need to bluster. I know how hard it must be. I just want to reassure you that I’ve made adequate provisions in my will.”

“Good God,” I laughed. “There’s no need to be so morbid.”

His gaze held mine, and he said, “Jonathon, there is every need.”

He obviously found it hard to tell me; he was a man unused to showing emotions. I could see the battle raging in his eyes. He wanted to tell me, but at the same time wanted neither to hurt me nor elicit my sympathy.

My heart began a steady, laboured beating.

“I have been ill for a number of months, Jonathon. Little things. Lapses of memory, periods of confusion, lack of concentration. Two weeks ago I suffered what I thought at the time was an epileptic fit. Old Harvey examined me, said it was more than likely a minor stroke, but that they’d conduct a few routine tests.” He fell silent, something stricken in his grey eyes.

“And?” I asked.

A stroke, I thought. Please let it be no more than a stroke. One could recover from a stoke, with care and attention, regain one’s former faculties...

He could not bring himself to look up. His eyes regarded the sugar bowl. “They discovered a tumour,” he said, “lodged deep in the temporal lobe, apparently. Been there for some time. Malignant and inoperable.”

I heard the words, and swiftly thereafter experienced their physiological effect: I was drenched in a cold sweat, then I felt suddenly hot. I found speech impossible.

“Specialists?” I managed at last.

He shook his head. “Been to three or four of the best, my boy. There’s no benefit trying to deny destiny. I’ve had a good stretch.”

I felt, then, a sudden anger. His attempt to mitigate the fact of his illness in banal platitudes made me want to shout out loud.

Our glasses were empty. I managed to steady my shaking hand long enough to pour two generous measures.

I wanted to ask him how long the doctors had given him, and it was as if he discerned the question in my stricken look.

“Harvey said I have about a month or two,” he said.

A part of me wanted to reach out and take my father in my arms, but a life-time of emotional reserve between us would not allow me this option. Also, I received the impression that he would be unable to cope with any expression of sympathy, as if pity might make the fact of his imminent demise all the more real.

“Dessert, Jonathon? Mrs Johnson’s prepared a heavenly crumble.”

He rang the bell before I could protest, and a minute later Mrs Johnson, eyes downcast, delivered the dessert on a tray.

We ate in silence. I had no appetite, but forced down the food nevertheless. The wine helped; we finished the bottle and opened another.

Amazingly, my father managed somehow to steer the conversation back to the banalities of the everyday. He told me of the latest Christie he had read last week, and a film he had seen at the local Odeon.

I forced myself to respond as I normally would, all the while wanting to break through the artifice of our conduct and communicate something of my pain and sympathy.

We finished the last of the wine, and my father consulted his fob watch. “Lord, is that the time? Said I’d meet Donaldson at the club at two.”

“I’ll get my coat,” I murmured.

He saw me to the door, then stopped me with a hand on my arm. “About the play your girl’s in,” he said. “If you could get a couple of tickets, I’d be delighted.”

I smiled. “I’ll do that, “ I said. “I’ll call in to see you tomorrow.”

“Donaldson’s invited me down to Kent for a few days,” my father said. “I’m leaving in the morning, but I’ll drop you a line when I return.”

I was about to embrace him, but he forestalled the gesture by holding out his hand, and I shook it and hurried down the steps and into the street without looking back.

I walked. I have found that, in times of emotional stress, the act of physical exercise works as a catharsis, burning off emotional energy. I strode through the fog-shrouded streets of London, taking little heed of where my steps were propelling me, glad of the anonymity afforded by the crowds of strangers who passed back and forth unseen by my gaze.

The fact was that in one month, perhaps two, my father would be no more. The person whose presence I had taken for granted for so long would be erased from my life. I would be unable to rely on the reassuring fact of his being available: I would miss him in a hundred small, often trivial, ways. More tragic yet - setting aside my own personal loss - was the fact that his consciousness, his one and only experience of this vast and complex world, would soon be no more, would gutter like a spent candle. After his death, life would go on, the sun would rise and fall, and he would no longer be around to witness the miracle of existence.

This thought brought tears to my eyes. I walked through the streets in a blind daze: I realised that I needed to talk, to confide in someone.

Perhaps it was my subconscious that propelled me in the direction of Shaftesbury Avenue, and thence to the stage door of the Curzon.

I pushed through, into a narrow dusty corridor. An assistant stage manager of my acquaintance was passing by. “Jonathon. Looking for Carla? They’re going through a final run of the first scene.”

“I’ll wait here,” I said.

“Go through and watch from the wings. They won’t mind. This way.”

He led me through an obstacle course of pulleys and discarded stage props, flats and enormous wicker baskets. The evocative aroma of grease paint, of dust frying in the footlights, permeated the air.

After the gloom of the backstage, the stage itself was a dazzling, other-worldly vision. I stood in the wings and stared.

The illusory miracle of the theatre casts a spell like no other art-form. Conjured before one’s eyes are scenes and visions that mundane reality can rarely match. I stared in wonder at the recreation of a magical Himalayan paradise, the snow-glittering peaks and slopes of Shangri-La, the fuselage of a crashed air-liner, and the incongruous sight of a group of Westerners standing around the wreckage.

Carla was centre stage, exhorting the group not to lose faith. It was Carla, and yet not Carla, the woman I knew: I marvelled, as I did every time I saw her upon the stage, at the new identity she could assume with the help of a little make-up, a change of attire, and consummate acting skill. The sight of her made me wonder, not for the first time, if I truly knew the real Carla DeFries, if the persona she adopted in my company was merely another guise which she assumed to play a part.

Then I saw Alastair Ticehurst, a young man dressed inappropriately in plus-fours. He was kicking his heels in the snow, from time to time contributing a line.

I stepped further back into the wings, wanting neither Carla nor Ticehurst to see me there.

Alastair Ticehurst was a rapidly rising star on the West End theatre circuit, a young, ridiculously handsome Don Juan towards whom I had good reason, I thought, to feel jealous. Two years ago he and Carla had conducted a brief affair, passionately romantic if the newspapers were to be believed. Carla had said very little about him to me - though she had told me more about her other lovers - and I had guessed that she still felt something for her old flame, discarded but evidently not extinguished.