The Kings of Eternity (7 page)

I ventured to ask what he was writing now, and he told me that he had just finished, and submitted to his editor, his latest novel.

For the next thirty minutes, as we drove though the mean environs of outer London, the steady drizzle turning to snow as we went, he told me about the book.

He detailed the plot, then described the characters, ideas and themes. He spoke with quiet conviction, and held me spellbound.

“You see, Jonathon, I’m not much interested in the here and now. I cannot merely limit myself to the contemporary. The novelist owes his reader more than the mere documenting of the world already known and written about by a thousand other writers. I try to offer alternative visions, views that perhaps no-one has quite broached in the same way before. But don’t get me wrong, I’m interested in human beings, in the constancy of human motivation and reaction - you’ll find these in my novels, as well.”

“The problem that most of us have,” I ventured, “is finding suitable subject matter, a subject that’s both interesting to the author and engaging to the reader. It’s all I can do to write about contemporary society. I’ve no idea how you come up with some of your ideas.”

He smiled. “I stare at the ceiling, empty my mind, and dream.”

Like this we whiled away the time as we left London in our wake and motored along the rolling roads of Berkshire.

For miles and miles in every direction, snow bequeathed the land the appearance of uniformity and innocence; not a soul was to be seen, and ours was the only automobile upon the road. I truly felt as though I were embarking upon some fantastical adventure... and my mood of questing levity was broken only by thoughts of Carla and my father.

Inevitably, perhaps, the conversation found its way on to the subject of Jasper Carnegie.

“Have you been to the Grange before?” Vaughan asked.

“Never. This will be the first time. I usually meet Carnegie at the office in London.”

“You’ve known him long?”

“He was in the year above me at Cambridge,” I said. “So, what, over fifteen years?” I smiled. “He was editing a magazine, even then. Inevitable that that’s what he’d do out here in the real world.”

“He was a friend at Cambridge?”

“I’d hesitate to call him a friend. More of an acquaintance. I’ve actually come to know him better over the past two or three years, since he started the
Scribe
.”

Vaughan glanced at me. “So, what do you make of him?”

I thought about it. “He was always the nervous, excitable sort. He always had a dozen literary projects on the go, without quite being able to settle on one and see it through. Since his father passed on and he inherited the Grange, he’s had more time and money to put into the magazine.” I fell silent, having realised, as I spoke, that I really knew very little about the editor of
The Monthly Scribe
.

Vaughan was silent for a while, then said, “In your opinion, is Carnegie of sound mind?”

The question surprised me. “Well... I’ve never had reason to question his sanity, if that’s what you mean.”

He gripped the apex of the steering wheel and glanced at me. “What did you make of his phone call?”

“It was somewhat surprising, to say the least.”

“What did he tell you?”

“Not a lot, and to be honest I’d had a little too much to drink at the time. He invited me down to the Grange, said something about wanting you and me to help him investigate something.”

“But he didn’t say what?”

I shook my head. “No, nothing at all. Just a second - he did mention something about some strange goings on.”

“He said much the same to me. When I tried to question him, he clammed up. Very odd, if you ask me. And all the more so because he hardly knows me. I’ve met him, what, on three or four occasions, when he’s bought pieces from me for the
Scribe
. I was the last person I thought he’d summon when he was in need of help.”

I glanced across at him. “You thought that that’s what he wanted?”

Vaughan frowned. “He sounded agitated, disturbed. More than once he mentioned an investigation, and odd happenings which he thought might interest me. But as I say, I hardly know the chap.”

“He always was a loner,” I offered. “He never made friends easily. Apparently he’s become a bit of a recluse at the Grange, only venturing out to oversee the office in London.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Vaughan murmured to himself.

In due course, as a swollen, ruddy sun was extinguishing itself over the low folds of the horizon, we drove through a snow-bound Aylesbury and followed a signpost to the village of Fairweather Cranley, ten miles to the south.

Forty minutes later Cranley Grange, to give Carnegie’s ancestral home its full title, appeared as we crested a rise in the lane; it stood between beech woods in the lee of the Chiltern hills, an imposing, foursquare pile with the folly-like addition of gothic towers or belvederes at each corner. Its dour façade appeared all the more eldritch between a roof upholstered in snow and the dazzling white mantle which covered the entirety of the surrounding countryside.

Vaughan halted the car in the lane, the better to view the Grange as the setting sun, behind us, blazed in the building’s serried windows.

“He lives there alone?” I enquired.

“Apparently. He has a brother, but I rather think he’s in India.”

“Charles. He’s a doctor in Bombay,” I said. “He was in the same year as me at Cambridge. A greater contrast to Jasper you couldn’t meet. Chalk and cheese.”

Vaughan ground the gears and we skidded down the gentle incline of the hill and turned into the drive-way. The snow had not been cleared, and progress was slow. Eventually we arrived before the rise of steps that gave access to the double doors. I climbed out, retrieved my bag, and accompanied Vaughan towards the house.

He manhandled the bell-pull, and seconds later we heard its sepulchral tolling deep within the house. We waited for what must have been five minutes, stamping our feet against the chill.

I stepped back from the door and stared up at the windows: there was not a light to be seen. We moved around the house, crunching through the thick fall of snow. I paused once to peer in through a high window; the room was in darkness, but I could just make out the shadowy shapes of what appeared to be cameras mounted upon tripods, spindly arc-lights, and other apparatus I was unable to name.

We came to the rear of the Grange and beheld the rectangle of a lighted window, and beside it the postern door.

I knocked, and a second later an old woman in a pinafore pulled open the door and ushered us inside. We stepped into a hot kitchen fragrant with the aroma of cooking meat.

“Mr Jasper’s expecting you, sirs,” said the cook. “Pleased to see he warned you not to use the front door. He often forgets to tell visitors, not that we get that many.”

Vaughan smiled at me, and refrained from mentioning Carnegie’s lapse.

The cook was saying, “If you’ll step this way.”

We followed her into a darkened corridor, where we were instructed to leave our bags, and followed her along a lighted passage towards a large room within which, I saw, blazed a fire in a hearth the size of my lounge.

“Make yourselves comfortable, sirs, and I’ll just go and fetch Mr Jasper.”

This was evidently the library, for shelf upon shelf of leather-bound volumes spanned the walls. A desk in one corner overflowed with paperwork; it was much like his London office in its appearance of organised disarray.

Vaughan planted himself with his back to the log fire, while I inspected the books ranged along the west wall. Most of them appeared to be volumes of traveller’s tales dating from the last century, along with a good number of atlases and bound maps.

“Gentlemen! Vaughan, Langham... you don’t know how delighted I am that you could make it.”

I turned. Jasper Carnegie stood framed in the doorway, a short, rubicund figure in moleskin breeches and a faded scarlet waist-coat. He was balding, with a well-fed face, and he appeared far older than his thirty-six years; indeed, it was hard to believe that he and I were almost the same age.

“Do let me get you a drink. Whisky, brandy? Something to take the chill from your bones!”

We both chose brandy and Carnegie rubbed his hands and beamed, delighted. “Brandy it is, and I think I’ll join you.”

He poured three stiff measures from a bottle on a well-stocked table in the corner. As Carnegie passed the drinks and joined us before the hearth, I was struck by the resemblance between the editor’s physique and the glass he nursed in the palm of his hand.

I also noticed, as he raised the glass to his lips, that his hand trembled, ever so slightly.

He enquired as to how our respective writing projects were faring, and for a while we traded business talk. He informed us that the latest issue of the
Scribe
was with the printers, and launched into a diatribe aimed at that beleaguered profession.

I wanted nothing more than to ask him why he had summoned us here, but thought it diplomatic not to interrupt.

He recharged our glasses and I admired his library.

This provided a further ten minutes of conversation. I was about to ask what, exactly, Carnegie had meant by the ‘strange goings on’ that he wished us to investigate, when he said, “I’ll show you to your rooms, and after you’ve changed we’ll dine. How’s that sound?”

My room was on the ground floor, next door to the room in which I had seen the photographic equipment. A fire blazed in the grate, and a majestic four-poster stood with its sheets drawn back; on a chest of drawers before the window was a bowl and pitcher of steaming water.

I washed and changed, then joined the others in the library, where we were to dine.

The dinner, I was somewhat surprised to find, was superb: a haunch of venison, roast vegetables, and numerous bottles of the finest wine I had sampled in ages. We ate and drank for over two hours in the flickering light of the fire, and after the initial uneasiness of our arrival, we fell into conversation as if we were old friends reunited.

Carnegie and I recounted our Cambridge days, while Vaughan spoke of his time at Oxford. I asked after Carnegie’s brother, Charles. As I thought, he was in India, working as a doctor.

“But,” said Carnegie, waving his glass - by this time we were all somewhat the worse for the grape - “You’ll be delighted to learn that he’ll be back next week. You’ll have to come over. What a reunion that will be!”

Vaughan regarded his glass. “If you don’t mind my asking, Carnegie, you mentioned on the phone-”

“There’s plenty of time for that tomorrow, my dear Vaughan.”

“You can’t even give us some hint?” I ventured.

He lowered his glass and leaned forward slightly, both palms flattened on the table to either side of his empty dessert bowl. “Gentlemen,” he said, regarding us in turn, “I rather think that, if I were to recount the reason for your presence here, you would in your current state of inebriation take me for a madman, and in the morning believe not a word of what you’d heard.”

“You are nothing if not intriguing,” Vaughan said, smiling.

Carnegie changed the subject. He stared at me with pop-eyes. “What do you think of the world, Langham?”

“The world?” I asked, surprised. “Well, that’s rather a big question after so much excellent claret.”

“I’ll be more precise. I mean, the modern world, society. Commerce, popular culture...” He waved, as if to encompass all the other aspects of the world he had omitted to mention.

“Well,” I began. “I think the great evil is the fact that popular culture is driven by commerce. People in power, with vested interests, are force-feeding a populace what they think it wants...”

Carnegie was nodding. “That’s why I like your novels, Langham. They seem not of this time. Your characters are paradigms for the universal aspects of the human psyche. Perhaps I’m not making myself clear...”

He refilled his glass, tipsily. I glanced across at Vaughan, who was smiling quietly to himself.

“And you, Vaughan,” Carnegie went on, “your visions... D’you know something, Vaughan? To be perfectly honest I’m sick and tired of the world I find myself inhabiting - I might even say, find myself imprisoned in. That’s why I find your visions so liberating. They speak to me of something beyond the mundane, the petty concerns of humankind.”

“That’s what I’m trying to get at,” Vaughan said. “I want to show the reader that there are more things in heaven...”

Carnegie reached across the table and gripped the cuff of Vaughan’s tweed jacket. “Do you really think so, my friend? Do you think that out there, or somewhere maybe in the future, there exist races and civilisations of which we with our puny intelligence can but dream?”

His eyes burned, and something about the intensity of his sentiment sent a shiver down my spine.

Vaughan smiled and filled his pipe. “Carnegie, I don’t just think there is more to the universe than we have ever imagined, I’m certain of it.”

Carnegie nodded. “Good man! Excellent.” He raised his glass. “To the mysterious universe,” he declared, “and all who live in it!”

We raised our glasses. “... to all who live in it,” we echoed.

“And tomorrow,” Carnegie went on, “I want to show you...
something
. Be prepared for a hike, my friends.”

This was his last coherent sentence, as shortly thereafter he slipped into unconsciousness. We eased him onto the chesterfield before the fire and retired to our respective rooms, I for my part intrigued by Carnegie’s singular pronouncement.

I passed a surprisingly peaceful night, troubled by dreams of neither Carla nor my father - but woke at eight with the realisation of my father’s illness pressing upon my consciousness. For a while, last night, inspired by drink, I had managed to push such thoughts to the back of my mind. Now they returned to haunt me. I tried to sleep a little more, but unsuccessfully.

We breakfasted in the library, Carnegie seemingly none the worse for his excess of the night before.

As Vaughan and I helped ourselves to kippers, Carnegie excused himself and told us that he would be back presently with something we might find of interest.