Tyme's End (24 page)

‘Oh, God, no.' I checked an impulse to stand up, like an anxious child. ‘It wasn't anything to do with Tyme's End – that is, you think I was frightened you'd change your mind, that I came back for that – truly, Jack, it wasn't –'

‘That wasn't what I meant.'

‘Then –'

He looked at me and smiled. ‘Very well. Tell me. If you were so . . . afraid, why did you come back?'

‘Because Edie told me – she didn't mean to, but she did – she told me that . . . She told me why Fraser was blackmailing you.'

He blinked. He didn't move, but his muscles seemed to tense. He stared at me until I felt my cheeks colour and had to look away; then he walked towards me, plucked the cigarette packet out of my lap and strode back to the window. He said, ‘Edie has no idea why Fraser was blackmailing me.'

‘Well –' I watched him light another cigarette, and felt glad that he had his back to me. ‘She didn't say that exactly, only she told me about you, and then I realised –'

‘She told you –?'

‘That –' I had finished my own cigarette, and I wished he hadn't taken the packet back; I desperately wanted something to do with my hands. ‘That you're – homosexual.' I wasn't sure I'd ever said the word before.

He laughed.

Of all the possible reactions, it was the one I hadn't anticipated. He threw back his head and laughed until the room rang with the sound.

I felt the blush on my face spread downwards, past my collar, across my whole body. I imagined a quick, clean death, and thought how grateful I would be for one.

‘H
o
mosexual,' he said, at last, correcting my pronunciation. ‘With a short “o”. It comes from Greek, Gardner, not Latin.'

‘I didn't know,' I said.

‘Why should you?' he said. ‘I'm sorry for laughing, but you're absolutely priceless. Edie, too. As Anthony would say, you can trust a lesbian to bark up the wrong tree.'

‘Then – you're not?'

He held my look for just long enough for me to realise what an impertinent question it was. Then he said, ‘As it happens – no. At least . . . no. To tell you the truth, I'm not terribly interested in that sort of thing.'

I hadn't known it was possible to flush more deeply than I already had, but I did. For a few seconds I felt nothing but embarrassment, like a lobster in a vat of boiling water. I cleared my throat. ‘Oh,' I said. ‘Jolly good.'

He watched me, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. It would have been more humane of him to avert his eyes, but I supposed I had deserved it.

At long last he said, ‘But you came back.'

I clenched my teeth together, caught his eye and looked away quickly.

‘How loyal. Like a dog.'

‘I'd imagined something so much worse,' I said, stumbling over the words.

His smile broadened, and he threw the cigarette packet back to me. I tried to field it, but my fingers only caught the corner. I bent down and blundered about for it on the floor, glad of the excuse to hide my face.

He waited until I'd got a cigarette out – the first one bent and crumbled in my fingers and I had to take another – and managed to light it. I drew in the smoke, glad of the bitterness, and felt my cheeks return slowly to their ordinary colour. Then he said, ‘Would you like to know why Fraser was blackmailing me?'

I looked up, sharply. ‘Only if you want to tell me.'

‘Oh, I think I do.'

‘Then – yes.' But I wasn't sure I was telling the truth. Of course it could be nothing serious – that Jack had disposed of Fraser so quickly reassured me of that – but all the same . . . I said, suddenly, ‘No. No, Jack, it's none of my business. I don't want to know.'

It was as if he hadn't heard. He walked over to the gramophone and wound it thoughtfully, using one foot to leaf through a pile of records that someone had left on the floor. He said, ‘Get a drink.'

‘I'm sorry?'

‘Get a drink. Get one for me too.' He glanced round, then crouched to pick up one of the records, turning it over to see the sleeve. ‘Whisky and soda for me. You'd better make yours neat whisky.'

I stood waiting, although I wasn't sure what for, but Jack didn't say anything else. I crossed the hall, went into the kitchen and poured drinks for us both. I did it slowly, wondering at my own obedience. I had left my suitcase beside the sofa in the drawing room, but the warm air blew in through the window, tempting me. I still had the train ticket to Peltenshall in my pocket. I could desert without Jack even noticing, as long as I didn't mind leaving my things behind me.

But Jack had been so kind to me; it would be the basest ingratitude, and cowardly to boot.

I took a deep breath, drinking in the fragrance of the garden, and heard, as if from a long way away, the gentle creaking of the house as it settled in the heat. Yes, it would be cowardly to leave. And if I did, Jack might –
would
, almost certainly – disinherit me. That seemed, suddenly, to matter.

I poured more whisky into my glass, until there was a scant quarter-inch of space between the liquid and the rim. Then I took a deep breath, picked up both glasses and went back into the drawing room.

*

Jack said, ‘Sit down.'

I sat down. I put my tumbler on the little table at my left hand. I said, ‘Honestly, Jack, there's no need – whatever Fraser accused you of, I know you can't have done anything base or vicious.'

‘Do you? How do you know that?'

I stared at him. ‘Because I know you.'

He said, without ill will, ‘Shut up, Gardner. I'm sure that's very touching, but you really know hardly anything about me.'

I picked up my drink – carefully, so that the liquid trembled below the rim, but didn't spill – and moistened my lips with it. I put the glass down again and sat with my hands folded. There was a breath of warm, sweet air from the window, the smell of summer.

‘Now,' Jack said, and leant against the windowsill, watching me, as if it were I, not he, who had something difficult to say. Then, in a dreamy, pleasant tone, like someone at a cocktail party, he began to speak.

.

‘I suppose you know a little of my war service in Arabia; of course you do – you read
The Owl of the Desert
, didn't you?
That isn't absolutely . . . exact, but the details hardly matter; it's close enough to the truth to give you a decent idea of what I did. My life had a certain – glamour – that the trenches lacked. To the English, mud is regrettable, but sand has an inherent romance.' He smiled. ‘Be that as it may . . . I worked for a little while in Egypt, and then I was appointed liaison officer between the Arabs and the British. That gave me some considerable freedom and I conducted my own operations, blowing things up, leading ambushes, organising assassinations of civilians.' I gave a start, and he laughed. ‘Only a few, Gardner, and they were
very
efficiently carried out.'

I said, ‘Is that what Fraser –?'

‘No. There were . . . other things.' There was a silence. ‘When one has absolute freedom . . . It's an extraordinary feeling. I could have done anything I wanted. At first there were no other British soldiers with me. And, in any case, I was producing very satisfactory results; it would have been foolish of my superiors to worry much about a few indiscretions here and there.'

I picked up my glass; when I raised it to my mouth the whisky slopped over the rim and ran down my chin. I swallowed and wiped my face with the back of my hand.

‘But after a while,' Jack went on, watching me, ‘I was sent another British officer, to tag round with us. It was a terrible bore. He was a little self-righteous Welshman – there was some story that his brother had been shot by our men at Gallipoli when they heard him speaking Welsh and thought he was a Turk – with a voice like a foghorn. To start with, I thought he might rub along with us quite amiably, but he turned out to be rather too naive for our purposes.'

‘You mean –'

‘I mean he had little conception of the necessities of modern warfare.' Jack shrugged. ‘And unfortunately he wanted to impose his views on me, and my men. He was determined that we should play at war like gentlemen, as though it were cricket – only without enjoying it, naturally.' He lit a cigarette, shook the matchbox thoughtfully and smiled. ‘You can keep that lighter of mine, by the way, Gardner. Where was I?'

‘Disregarding the Geneva Convention, I think.'

He shot me a glance, but I avoided his eyes. I took another gulp of whisky, feeling it burn as it went down. He said, ‘Yes, in effect. We had . . . procedures, with which Jones took issue. He made himself unpleasant.'

There was silence. I said, ‘So, what did you do?'

‘Nothing, at first.'

I looked at him, in spite of myself. ‘Nothing?'

‘We ignored him. We were perfectly civil and polite, and we acted as though he weren't there. We carried out our operations with the same enthusiasm as before. I ensured that he knew precisely what was happening. I listened to his outpourings of indignation with great courtesy and told him he was at liberty to report me. He threatened me with court martial. I was extremely patient with him. Then, a few weeks before he was due to return to Cairo, we came to a village – a sad, dirty little place – and my men found a group of women and children, hiding. I had one of the women brought before him, and gave him the choice between his life and hers. He chose his own. I went through all of them, one by one. At the end he was weeping like a baby, but he still chose himself over them.'

There was a silence.

I heard my voice say, ‘You – went
through –?'

‘I shot them,' he said. He exhaled a long plume of smoke, and it hung in the air, grey-blue, until the breeze blew it into nothingness. ‘He watched them die in front of him. The first time I wondered if he might sacrifice himself; by the second I knew he'd plead, and blubber, and crawl, and choose his life over theirs, every time. He left that village knowing what sort of man he was. I had no trouble with him after that.' There was a pause. ‘By the way, Oliver, do you know you're pouring whisky over your trousers?'

I set my glass down convulsively on the table, cracking the base. I looked at the damp patch on my knee. I heard a kind of sob, and thought I was laughing.

‘He should never have survived; for a while I thought he might kill himself, but of course he didn't have the courage. He saw worse things than that later, and joined in; he had nothing to lose, you see. Perhaps he even enjoyed himself eventually. He couldn't report me – couldn't do anything in the end, he was a wreck – and so I didn't worry. And then he went back to Cairo. After the war he fell apart. He was a dipsomaniac – dropped dead a few years ago. But a few weeks before he died, he ran across Fraser in some sordid dive and told him the whole story – and Fraser knew me from Cambridge, and knew he was telling the truth . . . It was the damnedest luck.'

‘Yes,' I said, in a low voice, ‘the damnedest.'

Jack looked at me, his eyes narrowed. He said, ‘Are you all right?'

I said, ‘Tell me some of the other things you did.'

.

.

VI

.

.

It was one of the strangest things I had ever experienced, that Jack should talk and talk and I should listen without quite hearing what he said. A quiet, distant part of myself noted the phenomenon, while I sat blind and frozen, following the words with my mind and thankful that most of them meant nothing. The world intruded on my senses with an uncanny – almost absurd – clarity: the shiny leather of the sofa, the amber dregs of whisky catching the electric light, the smell of alcohol and roses, every creak and murmur of the floorboards as Jack moved. I heard the sounds his mouth made – the damp clicks of his tongue against his teeth, the suck of spit as he opened and closed his mouth – and the rustle of his shirt. It was as if I could have mapped the whole world from where I sat, knowing the exact location and movement of each atom, like a god. All the time there were words washing at me and images rising in my head; but somehow I couldn't see how the two were linked, I couldn't understand the process. Jack was a murderer, a torturer. That much I had gathered in the first few seconds. But his voice went on and on, and seemed to fade away, while the sensation of the smooth curve of my glass against my hand seemed to grow until it took up all my consciousness.

It was my name that brought me back to myself: my name, in Jack's voice.

‘Oliver. You look like you're going to be sick.'

I said, with an effort, ‘I don't think so.'

‘Have you had enough?' He said it very gently.

I wanted to stand up, but my legs were numb, as if someone had cut neatly through my spine. I said, ‘Please –'

‘Have a cigarette.' He got one out of the packet, and lit it before he passed it to me. I took it and put it in my mouth, even though it had been in his first. He said, ‘You poor, silly twerp.'

I shut my eyes. I was afraid; if the pictures were still there . . . but the darkness was blank, merciful. All I could see was the beetle he had torn apart, like a little green-gold potentate: and that seemed such a small thing, a foolish thing.

There was silence; blessed, blessed silence. It was like the silence after a nightmare, when I'd wake to find the roar of the guns was only in my head, and a few deep breaths would chase the terror away.

‘Do you want more whisky?'

I wanted to look at him and laugh, but I couldn't remember how to do it. I couldn't believe I ever had done it. I said, ‘No,' and held on to the maimed beetle in my mind's eye, because a beetle was insignificant, bloodless, incapable of crying out.

I should have known, when I saw him do that. I
had
known; or part of me had. But I had come back to Tyme's End in spite of it.

All of a sudden I was cold. I saw my hands start to shake. My body was trembling so hard that the legs of the sofa were vibrating softly on the floor. My skin was crawling. The air around me was still and chilly; for a moment it was as if Tyme's End had disappeared and I was outside, alone, freezing, surrounded by space. I thought that if I opened my eyes I would see nothing but emptiness, grey emptiness, like one of my nightmares; but it wasn't no-man's-land, it was just . . . nothing.

I opened my eyes. Jack was in front of me. I stared into his face.

He said, ‘You look terrible. You'd better go to bed.'

‘I can't.'

‘It'll do you good.'

‘No.' I wasn't disagreeing, exactly, only trying to understand the words.

‘Come on, Oliver. It's been a bit bloody for you, I know. But it'll seem better by and by. You mustn't take it too hard.'

I stared at him. Yes, he was like a father, comforting me after I'd been bowled out for a duck. I would laugh when I could remember how to. Jack, my father.

He reached out and held my shoulders in a firm, warm grip. I turned my head and looked at his hand. It was a sinewy, brown, long-fingered hand: a good-looking hand, as far as it went. A charming, secretive hand. I could probably have recalled every occasion on which it had touched me; I had probably listed every one in my diary.

Everything blurred. I was on my feet, staggering out of the room and across the hall, punching a door open with my fists, leaning into a washbasin, watching whisky and bile splatter over the enamel. I was making noises like an animal, like a man sinking in quicksand. I was sliding down the wall because my knees had given way, and I was still retching, and there was the smell of acid, the stale stench of my own stomach. There was vomit on my chin and my trousers. I leant forwards, helpless, and the spasms seemed to go on for ever.

When they stopped, I got painfully to my feet. I bathed my face and rinsed my mouth. I met my own gaze in the mirror, and held it for as long as I could. My eyes were intent and unblinking; I was glad that I could keep them steady.

I went back into the drawing room. Jack looked round at me, and his eyes flicked down to my trousers, taking in the new stains. He said, ‘Did you make it to the lavatory in time?'

I found my voice, and it was cool, dispassionate, the kind of voice I could admire. I said, ‘Why did you tell me?'

He blinked. He shifted his weight, leaning back against the windowsill, one hand ruffling the ivy leaves as though they could feel his touch. ‘You asked me to, Gardner.'

‘I asked you not to.'

‘Why did you come back to Tyme's End?'

‘Because I loved you,' I said. ‘Because you'd been kind to me, and I'd been happy. It was very simple. Why did you tell me?'

‘Because I wanted you to know.' He smiled a little, watching me, and plucked an ivy leaf, twirling it in his fingers. ‘I wanted you to know what kind of man I am.'

‘You wanted to destroy me,' I said.

‘No.'

‘You knew I'd grown to love you. I worshipped you. I wished you were my father. You waited until you were sure, and then you told me.'

‘No,' he said again. ‘Destroy you? No. I found you, Gardner. I chose you. When Philip introduced you, I
recognised
you. It was as though I already knew you. Why would I want to destroy you? You're my heir.'

I laughed involuntarily, and thought I might vomit again. ‘Your
heir
? You don't think – oh, God. You think I'll take your money, you think I'll take Tyme's End, now that I know
this
?'

‘Yes,' he said. The ivy leaf spun as he rolled the stem between his fingers. ‘You're right, Gardner. I did wait until I was sure. I
know
you'll take my money, and Tyme's End. I know you'll stay here tonight, instead of running to the village inn, and when you wake up tomorrow nothing will seem quite as bad, and the day after that you'll start to remember how you felt about me, before you knew, and by the end of the week you'll be telling yourself that the things I've done aren't so bad, really.'

‘No.'

He held my look, and then shrugged, with a curious, self-mocking quirk of the head. ‘Won't you ask me why I did them?'

‘Very well: why did you do them?'

‘I wanted to see what would happen.' I heard myself make a harsh, disgusted noise, like a gasp, and he took a step towards me. ‘I did them to see if I
could
do them. I wanted to know if I'd get away with it. I did them for the same reason that I cheat at croquet: because it's a game, and only a fool plays by the rules.'

‘I didn't know you cheated at croquet,' I said.

He laughed, examining the stalk of the ivy he'd picked.

‘Why,' I said, and my voice faltered for the first time. ‘Why do you want me to inherit Tyme's End?'

The leaf fluttered in his hand like a scrap of dark green damask. ‘Ambition,' he said, slowly. ‘When I said I'd chosen you . . . I want to know that you'll be mine, even then.'

‘I'm not yours now.'

He looked up, and smiled. ‘Gardner, if you believe that, you're a greater fool than I thought. Why are you still here?'

‘Did you –' I stared at the window. It was dark; I hadn't noticed the time passing. ‘Did – you – ever –'

‘Not really; I don't go in for loving people much.' A fractional pause. ‘That was what you were going to ask, I take it?'

I sat down on the sofa and bowed my head. My father's suitcase looked even shabbier than usual in the electric light. My eyes blurred with fatigue. I said, ‘Yes, that was what I was going to ask.'

There seemed nothing more to be said. I could feel Jack's eyes on me, but I didn't look up, and after a while he walked over to the gramophone. I heard a record sliding out of its sleeve, and then the clunk and crackle as he set the turntable going. It was the
Danse Macabre
. The twelve notes struck quietly, and then Death's solo violin came in, inviting the corpses to dance, the melody as catchy as a music-hall song. Jack whistled softly, sketching the tune. I would have hated him if I hadn't felt so exhausted.

The record finished. He wound the gramophone and put it on again. I thought I would never get it out of my head: the spooky, jaunty rise and fall of the strings, the triumph of Death. I had liked it once.

Jack said, ‘Honestly, Oliver, you look done in. Go to bed.'

I shook my head.

‘Stop being such a b. f. and
go to bed
.'

I raised my eyes to his, wondering if I should feel anything, but I didn't. He was right; I should go to bed. There was nothing else to be done.

‘Is that it, then?' I asked. ‘No more to be said. What will we do tomorrow? Bathe and play croquet and read in the sun?'

He held my look. He said, ‘There's nothing to be afraid of.'

‘I'm not afraid.' It was true. I was tired; only tired.

Jack glanced at the gramophone and started to whistle again. Then he seemed to remember what I'd said, a few moments ago. ‘Yes,' he said softly. ‘Since you ask. That's it. Over.' He took the needle away from the record, and the sudden silence seemed to illustrate his point. ‘Or as over as anything ever is. I'm afraid no one escapes the past, Gardner; it's simply a question of how long the leash is.'

‘It isn't my past, it's yours. It has nothing to do with me,' I said, trying to fan the spark of anger into a flame. ‘You're not my father. This isn't my house.'

‘Then why don't you leave?'

‘I will, as soon as –'

‘If you were going to leave you would have left already,' he said, almost gently. ‘You stayed to ask questions. You won't leave now. The desire to understand comes from the desire to forgive. This
is
your house, or it will be; and I might as well be your father.'

I thought I could still hear the melody of the
Danse Macabre
, very faintly, as if it had set up an echo in my brain. I said, ‘You can go to bed, if you want.'

He hesitated, and shrugged. ‘All right,' he said. ‘I'll see you tomorrow.'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘Goodnight.'

.

I sat still, while he walked past me. I heard his footsteps going up the stairs, and the solid sound of his bedroom door closing. The noise was familiar. I had got into the habit of sitting on Jack's bed while he changed in the dressing room next door, leaving the communicating door open so that he could call through to me. I remembered being there a few evenings ago. We'd been laughing at something, although now I couldn't remember what it was.

I looked at my watch. It was very late, so late it was early. Jack must have talked for hours. Soon it would be getting light.

I bent to pick up my father's suitcase from the floor, laid it on the sofa beside me and opened it. My clothes were wound into a knot, and my father's picture was creased across the corner. I picked it up and turned it over. There had been a pencil wedged against the photograph, and it had left a dark scrawl across my father's chest. He looked at me, earnest and very young. I wondered whether I would have been different if he had lived; whether I would have been here. Mixed in with a mess of shirt collars I found my diary. I looked at it, trying not to let myself remember, then gave up the struggle and flipped it open, wrestling with a dull ache under my heart.

.

Played cricket most of the afternoon – with much hilarity – and then adjourned to the terrace to try to establish the rules, once and for all. (To no avail.) Champagne, again. I changed for dinner and then talked to Jack while he dressed. There was a cartoon he'd found in Punch that looked like Anthony, and we were late coming down because we couldn't stop laughing
. . .

.

Oh, God.

I turned the pages back. Here and there words caught my eye, but I couldn't bear to read any more; I knew what they said.

I looked at the window, seeing my reflection cut into pieces by the lead between the panes of glass. I heard Jack's voice again.
I shot them
. I sat as still as I had sat then, feeling the tears come into my eyes. Finally, when I blinked, they overflowed and slid down my face.