The Kings of Eternity (28 page)

In the event, he was shunted into a desk job at the Ministry of Defence, and during the last year of the war we recommenced our weekly meetings. Every Saturday night we would dine at Vaughan’s flat, and drink a brandy or two to the fate of our errant friend.

As chance would have it, Charles was absent on the evening when Jasper Carnegie next chose to contact us. Vaughan and I had finished dinner and were seated before the fire, poring over a chess board. Charles had pressing matters to handle at the Ministry, and so Vaughan had suggested that we continue the informal tournament of games we had begun months earlier.

I was about to resign, having found myself in a hopeless position approaching the end game, when a strange blue light filled the room.

At first I was startled: it had been many years since we had beheld the light of the blue egg, and it was not until we heard Jasper’s voice call out from the bureau in the corner of the room that I realised what was happening.

“Charles!” the disembodied voice said. “Charles, are you there? Vaughan, Langham? Can you hear me?”

We stared at each other across the board, like men in shock. Then Vaughan leapt to his feet and almost ran across the room and snatched up the blue egg.

He placed it among the scattered chessmen and leaned forward. “Jasper? We hear you loud and clear. I’m here with Jonathon.”

“And Charles?” Jasper enquired.

“Working late,” Vaughan said. “I’ll contact him-” he was reaching for the phone when Jasper interrupted.

The blue egg pulsed, filling the room with its azure effulgence. “There’s hardly time to say what I have to say. I have a minute, maybe two. The Vark are monitoring all our communications... You can tell Charles that I am fit and well, all things considered.”

“We’re delighted to hear that, old man,” Vaughan said. “We’ve been more than a little worried.”

“The last few years have been taxing, to say the least. More than once the Vark have almost had us, and only good fortune and tenacity won our escape.”

“How goes the fight?” I asked.

“At the moment they have the upper hand. Their ruthlessness is truly terrible to behold. I have seen entire cities of a million innocent souls razed to the ground by weapons unimaginable to humankind. But the more peoples they dominate, the more determined and trenchant foes they find pitted against them. We will not give up the fight so easily. A veritable trove of stars is the spoils for the victor.”

“Where are you now?” Vaughan asked.

We stared at the egg, awaiting Jasper’s reply from the stars. “We are in space,” he said, “and about to embark upon a flight to the galactic Core. We are transporting weapons and fighting machines for a world currently under Vark domination. Unfortunately, the enemy know of our mission, and are doing all within their power to prevent its success. It will be our most fearsome test so far. I contact you now, gentlemen, to say farewell lest I fail to survive the voyage.” He paused, then went on, “But enough of me! How about yourselves? What news of the world do you have to tell me?”

We stared at each other, and I shook my head to indicate that we should not appraise Jasper of the fact that planet Earth was undergoing its very own fight against the forces of evil. Vaughan spoke, “We are well, Jasper. Jonathon and I are still writing.”

“And Charles?”

“Ah... he is working in London, as a GP,” Vaughan said. “We are all well, and contemplating the years ahead.”

“I must interrupt,” Jasper said. “I’ve had word that we should take our stations - we phase immediately into the interspatial realm. My friends, take care.”

“Try to contact us again as soon as possible!” I cried.

The blue egg pulsed. “I shall do my best, my friends. Till then, farewell.”

His voice faded, and the blue light went out, leaving Vaughan and I staring at each other across the chessboard as the glow of the fire flickered across our startled faces.

I took my leave of Vaughan in the early hours of the morning, and as I stepped from his porch and made my hurried way down the darkened streets towards Mayfair, I glanced up at the stars and considered my friend and his valorous exploits against the Vark.

Weeks passed, and then months, and the war at last came to an end. I lost no time in fleeing London and sequestering myself once again in my cottage in Fairweather Cranley. I wrote the novels I had told Vaughan and Charles I wished to write, very much like all the others I had penned over the years. I kept myself very much to myself, venturing into London every couple of months in order to meet Vaughan and Charles for a meal, and occasionally indulging in a couple of halves of stout in the village’s one and only pub.

In ‘46, Charles suited action to his words and travelled to India. He left the blue egg with Vaughan and explored the length and breadth of the sub-continent. He kept in contact by frequent long and fascinating letters.

Three years after leaving London, in ‘48, perhaps spurred by Charles’ wanderlust, I put the finishing touches to that year’s novel in July and realised that I needed a change. There was a great danger, in the situation in which I found myself, of postponing all decisions until later. I had, after all, all the time in the world: why the hurry? But I was tired of writing the same old book over and over again, and though the quiet life of Fairweather Cranley suited me well enough, I craved a new location, somewhere quiet, preferably, but also warm and foreign. I had to overcome my inertia and actively seek out new horizons. And with new horizons, I hoped, would come new ways of seeing the world, new ways of writing about different characters in different situations.

Late in ‘48, my thoughts never far away from my friends on Earth, and Jasper Carnegie out there among the stars, I set sail for Argentina.

Chapter Twelve

Kallithéa, July, 1999

The day after his meeting with Forbes, Langham walked into Sarakina and dined at Georgiou’s taverna. As he ate, he thought about the journalist. Forbes was getting very close to Langham’s secret - not that the hack would ever learn the truth, of course. But his claim that he was a plagiarist might prove troublesome.

He could always leave Kallithéa, start a new life somewhere...

He considered Caroline. She was still in London, and he missed her company, her lively conversation. How could he think of leaving Kallithéa, and Caroline too? He told himself that within weeks he would be over her, as he established the routines of his new, assumed existence - but a part of him did not want to get over her. A part of him looked forward to a life in which she was a central fixture, a companion upon whom he could unburden his cares and worries, the considerable secrets of his past. Someone, perhaps, whom he could love.

There was a burst of activity on the cobbled waterfront beside the taverna. A gaggle of school-children were boarding a rickety bus, and behind it a line of cars blared horns as if in some kind of celebration. He wondered what might be happening - not that it took very much to get Greeks out onto the streets.

He gestured Georgiou over and asked, in his fractured Greek, what was happening.

Georgiou laughed. “The Americans are filming in Xanthos. Everyone is going over to watch. Big name stars, actors and actresses. One minute!”

He hurried inside and emerged seconds later with the island’s weekly newspaper. He folded it to the article about the making of a film, and prodded the grainy photograph of a famous American director.

Langham ordered a second glass of retsina and for the next five minutes worked hard at decoding the article. His understanding of written Greek was worse than his spoken Greek, but he could just about make sense of newspaper reports.

A film called
Summer and Winter
was being shot in Greece, and one of the locations was Kallithéa. The story was about how an English woman returns to Greece in old age to be reunited with a Greek lover she had fought alongside in the second world war. The part of the woman was being played by...

Langham stopped reading, and stared at the name. It was as if someone had dealt him a punch to the solar plexus. His vision misted and he felt nauseous.

The report went on to say that this was Carla DeFries’ first film role in more than twenty-five years. The actress, who had turned ninety-five this year, had been tempted from retirement by the director, an old friend...

Langham laid the paper aside and stared out across the ocean, seeing nothing but old memories in his mind’s eye.

If he went along to watch the filming, he told himself, and kept in the background so that she would not see him... There could be no harm in that. It would be a torture of sorts, but also a reminder, a reminder of the gift that he was forever in danger of taking for granted.

He paid Georgiou, crossed to the taxi office and ordered a cab to take him to Xanthos. Five minutes later he was bumping over the hills, cooling his face in the breeze that rushed in through the open window as he considered Carla DeFries. The last he’d heard of her had been back in the seventies when she had appeared in an English film set in France. In her sixties then, she had played the part of a grandmother, and Langham had been unable to bring himself to go and see the movie.

The filming of
Summer and Winter
was taking place in the town square. Langham alighted on one of the approach roads and wandered into the centre of town, accompanied by what seemed like the entire population of the island.

From the steps of the town hall he had a good view of the scene in the process of being shot. Amid the chaos of so much technical apparatus that he wondered how films were ever made - dolly-tracks, cameras like futuristic weapons, even lights, on a day like today! - two actresses were strolling through the deserted square, talking animatedly in the eye of the technical storm swirling around them.

Neither of the actresses was Carla DeFries. They were both young and blonde - playing the roles of American back-packers doing the islands. He searched through the production crew behind the cameras, but saw no sign of the great dame of British cinema, as he’d heard her called on more than one occasion.

He knew, then, that it had been a mistake to come. He decided to return, before he did see her: he would only feel like a voyeur, a ghoul feasting his eyes on a fate that befell others, and not himself.

He was about to turn and go when, inevitably, he saw her. She entered the scene from a building to the right of the square. He stared, pulse racing, as she walked, with a sprightliness amazing for her age, across the cobbles and began talking to the young women. She was thin, and upright, her blue-grey hair curled close to her head. Ninety-five, he thought, aware that his eyes were misting over with tears.

He found a taxi to take him home. For the duration of the journey he could not banish from his mind’s eye the image of Carla as she had been in 1935. It was as if the sight of her in the square had released a flood of hitherto suppressed memories. He recalled their arguments, incurred by his naïve jealousy. He recalled, too, the times of intimacy he had shared with Carla. He saw her staring up at him from the pillow, blue eyes sparkling with genuine love, he realised now. He had been such a callow fool.

That afternoon he sat on the patio and made himself work. He corrected that morning’s four pages and stopped writing at six, aware that the work, and the passage of hours, had helped to dull the pain.

He was about to make himself a meal - wishing that Caroline were here to join him - when he heard the sound of a motorbike approaching along the track from the village. His first reaction was outrage that the peace of the evening should be so violently disturbed: fortunately not many youngsters negotiated the rough track, preferring the metalled roads instead. The noise would be soon gone, anyway.

The roar increased, and then cut suddenly. He stepped to the edge of the patio and saw a leather-clad Greek youth holding the motorcycle steady while an old woman, head concealed in a huge helmet, climbed from the back. She pulled off the helmet, passed it to the rider, and looked around.

The years seemed to fall away, then. She still had the same amazingly blue eyes...

She saw him, and her mouth opened. She said something to the youth, who nodded.

Carla stepped forward over the rough path, staring at him. “I know you’ll probably think this awfully rude of me,” she said, “but I saw your photograph in a London paper a couple of months ago, and as I was on the island...” She stood below him now, staring up. “My word, you’re the spitting image.”

Langham was speechless; he knew it would be a mistake to let his emotions show, quite inexplicable to this old lady - but the fact was that he wanted to reach out and take her in his arms, and apologise.

“Excuse me?” he began.

“How rude of me!” she said. “I’m Carla DeFries, and I once knew your grandfather, Jonathon Langham. Well, I presume he was your grandfather!”

He smiled, nodded. “That’s right.”

She beamed, closed her eyes and lifted her face to the heavens. “When I saw the picture in the paper, I knew it had to be.”

“Please...” He stepped back, gesturing for her to climb the steps and join him.

She did so with a gentility and grace in which he saw, like a vague memory, the much livelier movements of the young woman she had been, almost sixty-five years ago.

He pulled a chair from the table and she sat down. “Can I get you a drink? Coffee?”

“You don’t happen to have any wine, young man?”

He smiled. “Daniel. I have some local stuff, not exactly vintage.”

“When in Rome,” she smiled, and her smile was still as enchanting.

He fetched two glasses and a bottle of retsina from the kitchen, his hands shaking as he lifted the glasses, and carried them out to the table.

He sat down and raised a glass.

She did the same. “To your good health, Daniel,” she said.

“And to yours,” he said, something catching in his throat.

“I hope you don’t mind my intruding like this, barging in as if you didn’t have a life of your own to lead? But I had to take the opportunity. You see, the photograph... It could have been Jonathon.” She paused. “Did you know that your grandfather and I...?”