Circles of Time (50 page)

“Good God!”

“My words exactly. But you know how Mother is. Bachelors bring out her sporting instincts.”

“I'll have to tell her that there happen to be women in New York. I don't need to export one from Abingdon.”

“New York! What a marvelous life you lead, Martin. Will you be back in England next June? For Ascot? I'll be entering Baconian in the Prince of Wales—mile and a quarter. He'll win hands down.”

Martin hung his suit on a hanger and eyed it dubiously. “Maybe you'd better get Eagles up here after all. June? Sorry. The Republican party convention is in June. I'm sure I'll be covering it, but put five pounds on the nose for me.”

“Righto, and you bet the dark horse for me.”

T
HE WOMAN THAT
Hanna had invited turned out to be sweet, quite pretty, and dull. So as not to insult his aunt in any way, Martin devoted most of the evening to her—even kissing her under the mistletoe. The woman was flustered and Martin unmoved by the experience. Fortunately, she complained of a splitting headache and went up to bed early. Her headache coincided with William's playing the latest jazz tunes on the phonograph.

“May I have the honor of this dance?” Winifred asked. “Or is the man supposed to ask that question?”

“It hardly matters,” Martin said. “These are modern times.”

They moved briskly across the ballroom floor to the syncopated rhythms of Dusty Swan and his State Street Five.

“I never realized how tall you are, Winnie.”

“
Junoesque
is the correct word. By the way, if you're wondering why Fenton has said so few words to you this evening, it's because I warned him, under pain of disfigurement, not to take you aside for an interminable chat on the condition of the world. You can do that tomorrow. Boxing Day is ideal for that sort of thing. Christmas is for unsullied happiness and joy.”

“I couldn't agree more. Do you think he'd shoot me if I led you under the mistletoe?”

“He's more liable to shoot you if you don't.”

He kissed her beneath an arch, under a dangling sprig of green. She drew her head back and smiled at him, her hand pressing his.

“You've been a wonderful friend, Martin.”

“I've been blessed with people to have as friends.”

Her smile was tender. “You know so much and keep such silent counsel. Jacob's getting married. Did he tell you?”

“Not yet—but he'll get around to it one day.”

“He called yesterday. I wished him and his Amelia well.”

“And meant it.”

“Yes, of course.”

He kissed her again, lightly on the cheek. “You'll see him before I will. Tell him that I knew all along it wasn't brotherly concern.”

I
T WAS COLD
on the terrace. The clean, crisp cold of snow, a star-filled sky. There was no moon, but the stars sent down their own pale light. Turning up his coat collar, he walked slowly along the terrace, the sound of the phonograph fading behind him—
Dance time … dance time …

He hummed the Charleston tune and strolled on, hands in his pockets, past the yellow rectangles of light cast through the ballroom's tall windows. Christmas night. And all is still—all is bright.

He took out a cigar, found a lone match in a pocket crease and lit it, holding the cigar to the tiny flame until it nearly touched his finger.

He'd be at sea in two days. The gray channel, England and the Continent slipping away beyond the curving wake. So much left behind. All the happiness he had ever known buried forever in a Flanders grave.

He blew a thin stream of smoke and watched it drift beyond the stone balustrade into the dark gardens. He could see lights far off across the snow-covered lawns, winking through the trees that flanked the drive; could hear the faint sound of many voices singing. He thought of Munich and the cold, wet snow, the lanterns and the flags. Thought of marching men singing of blood, terror, and death. Leaning against a carved granite post, he watched the oncoming procession wend its way closer to the house—people from Abingdon, singing, their strong voices carrying in the still air …

He walked slowly toward the front steps and the approaching carolers, toward the marching ranks and the lanterns swinging blotches of light on the dark ground, and he whispered: God. Oh, God … let the marching always be to glad song—to tidings of comfort and joy.

B
ORN IN
H
OLLYWOOD
, California, in 1927, Phillip Rock was the son of Academy Award–winning silent film producer Joe Rock. Phillip moved to England with his family when he was seven, attending school there for six years until the blitz of 1940, when he returned to America. He served with the U.S. Navy toward the end of World War II. He spent most of his adult life in Los Angeles, and was the author of three previous novels before the Passing Bells series:
Flickers
,
The Dead in Guanajuato
, and
The Extraordinary Seaman
. He died in 2004.

Of
The Passing Bells
, Phillip Rock wrote, “The idea came to me when I was a boy and stood with my father in a London street at the hour of eleven on the eleventh day of November and first heard that awful minute of total silence as the entire nation stood with bowed heads remembering their dead. It took a long time to put it on paper.”

T
HE GUNS OF
A
UGUST
are rumbling throughout Europe in the summer of 1914, but war has not yet touched Abingdon Pryory. Here, at the grand summer home of the Greville family, the parties, dances, and romances play on. Alexandra Greville embarks on her debutante season, while brother Charles remains hopelessly in love with the beautiful, untitled Lydia Foxe, knowing his father, the Earl of Stanmore, will never approve of the match. Downstairs, the new servant Ivy struggles to adjust to the routines of the well-oiled household staff while shrugging off unwelcome attentions, and the arrival of American cousin Martin Rilke, a Chicago newspaperman, threatens to disrupt the daily routine.

But ultimately, the Great War will not be denied, shattering the social season and household tranquility, crumbling class barriers, and bringing its myriad horrors home—when what begins for the high-bred Grevilles as a glorious adventure soon begins unraveling the very fabric of British high society.

He drove up to Flanders in the early summer of 1921 knowing that it would be for the last time. He had finally, after nearly four years, reconciled himself to the unalterable fact that she was dead.

So begins this haunting novel of war's aftermath and the search for love and hope in a world totally changed. A generation has been lost on the Western Front. The dead have been buried, a harsh peace forged, and the howl of shells replaced by the wail of saxophones as the Jazz Age begins. But ghosts linger—that long-ago golden summer of 1914 tugging at the memory of Martin Rilke and his British cousins, the Grevilles.

From the countess to the chauffeur, the inhabitants of Abingdon Pryory seek to forget the past and adjust their lives to a new era in which old values have been irretrievably swept away. Charles Greville suffers from acute shell shock and his friend Colonel Wood-Lacy is exiled to faraway army outposts, while Alexandra Greville finds new love with an unlikely suitor; and to overcome the loss of his wife, Martin Rilke throws himself into reporting, discovering unsettling currents in the German political scene. Their stories unfold against England's most gracious manor house, the steamy nightclubs of London's Soho, and the despair of Germany. Lives are renewed, new loves found, and a future of peace and happiness is glimpsed—for the moment.

The final installment of the saga of the Grevilles of Abingdon begins in the early 1930s, as the dizzy gaiety of the Jazz Age comes to a shattering end. What follows is a decade of change and uncertainty, as the younger generation, born during or just after “the war to end all wars,” comes of age: the beautiful Wood-Lacy twins, Jennifer and Victoria, and their passionate younger sister, Kate; Derek Ramsey, born only weeks after his father fell in France; and the American writer Martin Rilke, who will overcome his questionable heritage with the worldwide fame that will soon come to him. In their heady youth and bittersweet growth to adulthood, they are the future—but the shadows that touched the lives of the generation before are destined to reach out to their own, as German bombers course toward England.