Tyme's End (21 page)

I got to my feet, taking in the debris that was scattered around us. ‘Shall I pack the luncheon basket?'

‘Yes. And perhaps you'd better get dressed too.' He glanced up at me, a glint in his eyes, and I felt myself blushing.

I pulled on my trousers and shirt, without bothering with my tie, and started to clear up the mess we'd made. Our glorious afternoon was over; there was nothing but the greaseproof paper wrappings and empty bottles to testify that it had happened at all. I passed Jack his clothes, but he continued to sit, intent on the beetle in his hand, without seeming to notice them.

I closed the hamper and strapped it shut, feeling my shirt graze the new sunburn on my shoulders. I had a sudden impulse to ask Jack why he had been so rude to Edie earlier; when I next saw her I wanted to know that he had explained to me, that I understood. I cleared my throat, but Jack didn't look up. He was frowning a little, concentrating, and his hand was still curled around the beetle. I started to smile at the childish, attentive look on his face; then I saw that he was pulling its legs off, one by one, with precise, deliberate fingers. As I watched, he flicked the last little strand of black away, leaving the beetle as nothing but a gold-green carapace, like the boss of a shield or a brooch. There was a pause while he tilted his head, like an artist considering the final details of a painting. Then he pinched the antennae delicately off the beetle's head.

I stayed where I was, silent.

I thought he would crush it to death then, but he only put it gently on the ground, smoothing a place for it between two tufts of grass. He looked up, saw me watching him, and smiled.

‘Ready to go?' he said. ‘You needn't wait for me.'

‘I don't mind,' I said. I stood there, quiet, while he got dressed and gathered up an empty bottle that I had missed; and I let him put his arm over my shoulder as we walked back to the house together.

.

The rest of that afternoon passed in a hot, uncomfortable dream. My head was aching and my back and legs were burnt and raw. Jack had tea with the others, outside under the copper beech, but I had had enough of the sun and shut myself in my room. I tried again to read, but my sense of unreality was too strong, as though I had a fever. Once I smelt cigarette smoke drifting up from the drawing-room window below and heard snatches of laughter and male voices, but I was almost certain it was only Anthony and Langdon-Down. The sunlight played on the ceiling, reflecting off the ivy, honey-green.

It wasn't until after dinner, when the sun had gone down, that the clarity seemed to come back into the world. The heat had faded and Jack decided that we should take our brandy outside, in the cool blue evening. The swifts were looping and twisting between the trees and I stood watching them, half hypnotised by their grace and silence. Langdon-Down was delivering a donnish, soporific monologue on the Cathars – the conversation at dinner had touched on ideas of evil, and now he was examining, pedantically, the concept of the devil in European history – but the quiet monotony of his voice was easy to disregard. Anthony said something mocking, and Edie laughed, but I paid no attention.

Slowly I became aware of Jack at my elbow. When I looked round, he said, ‘Something wrong?'

‘No,' I said. ‘Only sunburn.'

He laughed quietly. ‘Idiot.'

‘I know.' I hadn't realised that I was miserable until I felt the knot inside me loosening. He had spoken to me during dinner, of course, but that had been in front of the others; that was different. ‘But you could have warned me.'

‘That you're an idiot? Surely you knew that already.'

I punched him gently. ‘That I'd get burnt.'

‘As the moth said to the flame,' he murmured, and grinned. ‘Is it my fault if you have no sense at all? Get Edie to give you some cold cream. No doubt she'll apply it for you as well, if you ask nicely.' He lit a cigarette, went to put the case back in his pocket and paused, holding it open. ‘Have one.'

‘No, thanks.'

‘Go on. Have a cigarette.' There was a note in his voice that I hadn't heard before; or not when he was speaking to me, anyway. ‘Have a bloody cigarette, Gardner.'

I held his look for as long as I could, and then took one. He leant forward to light it for me, his eyes intent. Then he squeezed my shoulder. It hurt, but I didn't say anything. ‘Good man. But you're being unsociable. Come and sit down.'

I nodded, but I stayed where I was for a little while, unwilling to turn my eyes away from the swifts' mesmeric dance. The cigarette he had given me tasted bitter, like ash, but I smoked it obediently, without asking myself whether I was enjoying it.

When I did turn back towards the others it was because I had heard my name. Anthony smiled when he saw me move and raised his voice. ‘I was saying to Jack that we shall have to find a way to amuse you tomorrow. He has grown-up business to attend to.'

Langdon-Down added, ‘Gardner is a very resourceful and scholarly young man. As I was saying, in the twelfth century, the Bogomils . . .' but no one was listening to him.

‘Yes, do be quiet, Tony. You're only jealous that you're not nineteen yourself,' Edie said. ‘If anyone needs to be kept out of mischief it's you, not Oliver.'

‘What business?' I said.

‘I have a visitor,' Jack said.

‘How long is he staying for?'

Anthony muttered something to Edie. She turned her head and hissed at him, and he laughed.

‘He's not staying at all,' Jack said. ‘He's a – well, not quite a friend.' There was a mocking note in his voice, but his face was thoughtful.

‘Won't you introduce us to him, Jack?'

‘I doubt you'd want to know him particularly, Edie. He's a bit of a poor specimen. He was at Cambridge with me, but I don't speak to him much.'

‘Oh, Lord,' Anthony said. ‘Not the chap who turned up just before Christmas?'

‘That's the one. James Fraser. He's a queer fish,' Jack added, smiling at me. ‘Rather pathetic, really. I shouldn't wonder if he meets a sticky end one of these days.'

‘It beats me why you put up with him,' Anthony said.

‘Oh, auld lang syne . . . He was at Emmanuel. I told you, didn't I? We had some larks together, but he got sent down. Then he was shell-shocked in the War. He's a sort of limpet, these days. Won't go away, and I don't have the heart to labour the point.'

‘That's not like you,' Edie said. It was too dark now to read her expression.

‘He was an entertaining chap when I knew him. We were good friends for a while. He was gratifyingly obedient.'

I sat down on the steps a few feet away. ‘What was he sent down for?'

Anthony laughed, and Jack shot him a humorous glance, sharing the joke. Edie turned away, hunching her shoulders. I had the impression that this was a story they had heard before. Anthony said, ‘Tell him. It's a scream.'

‘We had a Viking funeral for the college tortoise,' Jack said. ‘We poured kerosene over a punt and sent Plautus – that was the tortoise – down the Cam in it, blazing away. It was glorious.'

I laughed, and Edie turned sharply to look at me. She said, ‘They should have sent you both down. Not just James.'

‘They wouldn't have sent James down if he hadn't been such a damn' fool. In any case, it was trivial. We were simply high-spirited. And undergraduate-ish, I admit.' He glanced at me, a smile at the corners of his mouth. ‘But then, so many undergraduates are.'

‘They should have sent you both down,' Edie repeated, putting her glass down on the steps with a heavy clink. ‘Poor Plautus.'

‘Not many tortoises get such a spectacular valediction,' I said.

‘Not many tortoises get burnt alive.' She stood up a little unsteadily, and made her way to the table to pour herself another drink. ‘It was still alive, you see, Oliver. Viking funeral indeed! I think it's simply sick-making. The poor creature must have been in agony.'

There was a pause. Anthony said, ‘Women are so sentimental.'

Jack was watching me. I didn't know how I knew, in the dark, but I could feel his eyes on my face. He reached out and tousled my hair and I bent my head, letting his fingers trace the vertebrae at the back of my neck. I closed my eyes and thought of the swifts, weaving eternally back and forth on the sky. I heard Edie drink her whisky in two or three gulps, stand up and walk away.

Anthony chuckled softly, without warmth. ‘Isn't that just like a lesbian?' he said, twisting to stare after her. ‘Call her a woman and she gets the black-and-blue, cameelious hump.'

‘You don't know what you're talking about,' Jack said, his fingers tightening on the top of my spine.

‘Oh, come on, Jack, she's positively –'

‘Go to bed, Gardner,' he said, as if we had been sitting in silence. ‘And put cold cream on your shoulders, or you won't be able to move tomorrow.' I looked up at him and he leant back in his chair, taking his hand away. ‘Go on.'

‘I'm not sleepy.'

‘Oliver. Go to bed.' He held my gaze, without smiling, and his look was so level and intimate that it was as if there was no one else in the world.

I stood up, nodded goodnight to Anthony and Langdon-Down, and went into the house and upstairs. I stood at the window in my bedroom, breathing in the cool night air, and put my hand to my face. I could smell cigarette smoke on my skin.

It was the first time he'd called me Oliver.

I stayed where I was for a long time, whispering my name to myself over and over, trying to imitate exactly how he'd said it. It seemed absurd to me that it was only now, after nineteen years, that I truly believed that it was
my
name.

.

.

III

.

.

James Fraser arrived the next morning, after breakfast. Edie and I were playing chess on the front lawn and saw him come down the drive: an emaciated, shabby-genteel figure with thinning, colourless hair and a general air of being held together by his clothes. He glanced at us as he passed, and I had the fancy that his eyes lingered on me, but his manner was so furtive and ill at ease that it seemed bad form to look back at him. I turned my gaze deliberately back to the chessboard, and only heard the clang of the doorbell and the creak as the door opened.

Jack said, ‘Fraser,' without any particular inflection.

‘Martin.' His voice was thin and reedy, with a well-to-do accent that contrasted oddly with the wheedling tone. ‘Answering the door yourself. Still can't get the staff, I suppose?' He gave an unpleasant, cut-off giggle.

‘You'd better come in.'

The door shut. I moved a chess-piece at random, and when I looked up Edie was watching me, half smiling. ‘Don't worry,' she said. ‘It'll be over by luncheon, and then you'll have him back.' She took up her pawn, swapped it for my bishop, and dropped the larger piece into the grass.

‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘Check, by the way.' I looked down again, surprised, and she laughed. ‘Excuse me. I should have said checkmate.'

‘You're quite right,' I said, after a moment. ‘Blast.'

She surveyed the board for a few moments, smiling, and then swept her hand across the configuration of pieces, knocking them into the grass with the others. ‘You're a simply terrible chess-player.'

‘No, I'm not,' I said absently, turning to look over my shoulder. ‘I'm chivalrous, that's all.'

She snorted, and followed my gaze to the drawing- room window. She said, with uncanny perspicuity, ‘There's no point staring. They'll be in Jack's study.'

‘I wasn't.' I caught her eye, and gave up the pretence. I drew my knees up and laced my fingers between them, unable to account for my unease. ‘I don't understand what business he could possibly have with Jack.'

‘Why should you? You've only known Jack for a few months; it's not as if you're privy to every detail of his life.' She spoke sharply, but she didn't meet my eyes.

I said, stung, ‘I only meant – he didn't
look
–'

‘You don't own him, you know. Jack is perfectly capable of looking after himself.
Too
capable. And – honestly, for heaven's sake, as if
you
–' She stopped, as if she had caught herself just in time.

I said, ‘As if I what?'

There was a silence. She picked up the chessmen and started to set them up. The two armies faced each other in perfect, hostile symmetry.

I waited, but after a while I knew she wasn't going to answer. I had brought my diary outside with me, and I reached for my fountain pen and forced myself to write a few lines, but it was no good. I couldn't concentrate. I found myself staring at a pale expanse of paper, my mind wandering. I couldn't explain what had put the wind up me, but it
was
up and blowing like a cold draught on the back of my neck, even in the heavy summer heat. If Fraser had only been different; if I could have seen at a glance why Jack chose to invite him to Tyme's End . . .

The white page of my diary glared at me in the sun, and a headache began to knock gently at my temples. Abruptly, I stood up. ‘I'm just going inside, to –'

Edie leapt to her feet and took hold of my arm. ‘Don't,' she said.

‘Don't what?'

‘Eavesdrop. Don't.'

I shook her off, rather more roughly than I meant to. ‘I shouldn't dream of it. I'd like a drink, that's all.'

A second passed. She said, ‘I'm sorry, that was a beastly thing to say,' but there was something in her expression that told me she hadn't been persuaded.

It was on the tip of my tongue to retort with a stronger term than
beastly
, but I swallowed the impulse and turned away without a word. I went through the side door into the scullery and poured myself a glass of water; I didn't let the water run, and it was warm and cloudy and tasted stale. Someone – probably Anthony – had taken the gramophone out of doors, and a catchy, irritating little melody was drifting in from the rose-garden. Rather than go back outside, I went through into the hall, shutting the door behind me; the music faded, and instead I could hear the quiet sounds of the house settling in the heat, and a murmur of voices from Jack's study. I stood irresolute, torn between wanting to step closer to the study door, and my pride. Whatever Edie said, I wasn't caddish enough to listen at keyholes, not even if I had a nagging sense that something was wrong. And if Jack caught me at it, I should never forgive myself.

Fraser raised his voice. The words were unclear, but the tone was unmistakably peevish, a thin, reedy petulance that set my teeth on edge. I was sure it was not one I would have employed with an old friend, whatever the circumstances.

But Jack laughed. It brought me back to myself: there couldn't possibly be anything wrong if he could laugh like that. I crossed the hall, treading heavily, and opened the front door. At the same time I heard the study door open behind me, and Fraser's voice muttering a few words that I didn't catch.

Jack said, ‘Ah, Gardner. James, you haven't met Oliver Gardner, have you? A great friend of mine.' When I turned he was smiling at me, but there was a crease between his eyebrows.

Fraser shot me a glance that seemed at once troubled and wary. Now that I was closer to him, I could see that he had once been very good-looking. It made me uncomfortable; somehow, I thought, it would have been better if he had always been so unprepossessing. I didn't want to see, in this sneaking, threadbare man, the ruins of something else.

He said, ‘Oliver Gardner,' repeating Jack's intonation exactly.

‘How do you do?' I held out my hand, but he didn't take it. Instead he glanced at Jack, and although his face was hostile the look that passed between them contained a kind of understanding.

‘I'll come back in a few days,' he said, ‘when you've had time to think.'

‘No doubt,' Jack said, with a half-smile.

‘If you need to speak to me –'

‘I shan't.'

He shrugged, but there was nothing easy or assured in the gesture. ‘If you do, I'm staying at the Cloven Hoof, in Falconhurst. The public house, in the High Street.'

‘Yes, I know it well. A pity you can't stay here, but I'm afraid –'

‘I wouldn't stay here if you paid me.'

‘Oh dear,' Jack said, ‘not even then? That
is
damning.' He caught my eye, and his eyelid flickered in the merest suggestion of a wink. ‘Well, I suppose we shall have to soldier on without you. And now, if you don't mind . . .' He gestured towards the open door, and Fraser shambled past me and out on to the doorstep. I smelt decay, and a whiff of spirits, and drew back; Fraser seemed to notice the movement and halted, looking at me. His eyes stayed on my face for longer than was comfortable.

Jack said, ‘Come on, Gardner, old chap. Let's have a drink.'

I turned away. But I could not shake off the sensation that Fraser was still watching me; and even after he must have been long gone, I felt that look, and saw those eyes, filled with an unexpected, unwelcome fellow feeling.

.

I might have been imagining it, but after that encounter with Fraser it seemed to me that Jack's manner towards me changed. It was nothing that I could identify clearly: perhaps a softening in his face when he looked at me, or an affectionate, more possessive note in his voice when he spoke. When before he might have laughed as Anthony insulted me, he would quash him mildly; when he would have chaffed me himself, he only smiled. I was used to friendly mockery – after all, that was what, at school and even in my college, had formed the basis of most friendships – and I found this new consideration disconcerting; but nonetheless I couldn't help drinking it in, savouring it, like wine. That afternoon, after Fraser had left, when I lay dreaming under the copper beech, my hands behind my head, and Jack declaimed snippets of the Seneca translation he was working on, essaying the sound of the words – and later, that evening at dinner, when he quelled Anthony mid-mockery – I thought I perceived that new warmth, and it reassured me. The unease that lingered after Fraser's departure faded, and in my relief I shone in conversation and managed to say several things that made Jack laugh incontinently. I went to bed light-hearted, the morning's events quite forgotten.

And, as if to confirm my sense of a danger somehow turned aside, the next day and the next passed without incident, perfectly. I'd never been so happy as I was then: perhaps I'd never known it was possible. The weather was better than ever, and I seemed to move through a rich, indolent atmosphere, like honey. We read, bathed, smoked, played croquet and a kind of spurious cricket, talked, ate, drank – and every pursuit was the best, the only
possible one. Edie and Anthony lost their sharp edges, softening in the sun; Anthony took photographs of us all, concentrating so hard he forgot to insult anyone, and for the first time I understood why Jack was fond of him. Even Langdon-Down, as he pottered about trying to reassemble his papers for his departure, managed to achieve a sort of uncharacteristic levity. It was as if the world had, for a few days, conspired to achieve perfection. And at the centre of it – at the centre of Tyme's End – was Jack, smiling at my enjoyment.

It was at breakfast, the day after that, that the first cloud covered the sun. After four or five cloudless days, even the faintest hint of grey felt oppressive, and that morning was almost completely overcast, the sun only just perceptible through a heavy haze. I had slept longer than I was accustomed to, and my eyes were sticky and swollen. I had dreamt again of my father; that is, I had had the same nightmare, only this time I had had the unpleasant sense, as I watched the men in grey advance, that I myself was culpable, that with a few words I could have averted the tragedy. I had woken suddenly, my mouth so dry it took an effort to open it, and, although I was glad not to have cried out, the nightmare clung to me, like a cobweb. It made me temperish and out-of-spirits. That morning, for the first time, I wished that Tyme's End had a proper complement of domestic staff; it irked me to have to assemble my own breakfast, and to sit surrounded by the debris left by the others. I found a letter from my mother waiting for me on the table, and I read it irritably, resenting her for her barely- concealed wish that I would come home, and her inconsequential news. I put it aside without finishing it, making a guilty mental vow to answer it that day, whatever other temptations came my way. As I slid it back into the envelope I saw another letter, addressed in a hand I didn't recognise, that had been concealed underneath.

Oliver Gardner, Esq., Tyme's End, Falconhurst
.

I took it up, examining it with a mild curiosity. I had mentioned to several of my friends at Sidney Sussex that I would be spending part of the vac at Tyme's End, but I knew their handwriting, and the postmark was local and the envelope cheap and lightweight. I opened it.

.

I am aware that I am taking a colossal liberty in writing to you like this, but I ask for your forbearance quite sincerely. I know you will think this very bad form. I would have done so, once. But I ask you – no, I beg you, it will not surprise you if I do not stand on my dignity – to read this without throwing it into the fire. Read it. Throw it away if you must, but read it, first.

.

I sat very still, and it was some time before I could bring myself to read the rest. The writing was thin and pernickety, and I had never seen it before; but I knew, after those few lines, whose it was.

.

God knows what you thought of me, when we met a few days ago. I dread to think. At your age I would have felt nothing but contempt – or, rather, dismissed myself as an irrelevant sort of fellow, the type that other chaps might end up like. But I come from a good family, and I was – as you know, of course – one of Martin's associates at Cambridge. I was also very handsome. I mention that in the hope that you will see some similarities between my case and yours.

My friendship with Martin was probably the most intense of my life. He inspired me to everything I achieved, good and bad. He had a great power of influence, something which I see has increased with his age, especially now that he has attained some small measure of celebrity. Perhaps – no, certainly – you will despise me if I warn you against that. I mean, against him. But it is through no malice, no jealousy, that I urge you not to pursue his acquaintance. It is simply that I think if I had not met him, I would have been a better and happier man. I know it. I am not referring simply to the incident which led to my being sent down – if I am bitter about that, it is because Jack did not get sent down, not because I did. I mean that his influence, absorbed over a long period of time, is noxious, like one of those poisons which can kill while hardly making their presence felt.