“But how could he communicate with these two? More fancy work?”
“I imagine so, Inspector. They were a rum trio, full of fancy work, believing all manner of things that in a few years you may be able to put on a charge sheet. It’s already happened in some countries.”
“I’ll take a note of their particulars,” said Inspector Triffett, bringing out his notebook. “Names—addresses—occupations—all you know about ’em, sir.”
And that was his farewell to the Magicians.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Gifts of the Magi
He was talking to old George Hathon again in the club where they had talked after the last board meeting. It was about the same time of day, just after six, and the cavernous black-leathery smoke room was filling up once more with the representatives of power and money. They looked no better now than they had done before; if anything rather worse. Old George too, as Ravenstreet noticed with regret, looked worse, as if age at last were galloping away with his huge sagging carcase, his purple face that might burst like an overripe fig.
“There’s one thing, Charles,” Hathon was saying, “I’ve won five pounds from young Garson. I bet him you wouldn’t say ‘I told you so’—and though I’ve given you plenty of chances, you haven’t done. He was certain you would. All these youngish chaps are the same—bounders. They think the rest of us are bounders too. I’m talking now about the round-about-forty chaps. The fellows younger still are trying to be gentlemen.”
“I never pretended to be a gentleman.” Ravenstreet gave the statement no particular emphasis.
“We’re probably talking about two different things. However, I’ve won a fiver. If he’ll believe me. He’ll probably ask you to confirm it. But let’s be serious, Charles. Are you sure you won’t change your mind?”
“Yes, George. There isn’t a chance of my coming back to the Company. I don’t think I would even if I was broke. I also think you’re making a mistake—trying to swop horses again. It’s Selby’s type of enterprise now, and you’ll be foolish if you try to take it away from him. Fight it out along that line. Or—if you don’t feel like doing that—get out yourself, as I did.”
Hathon nodded, grunted, coughed over his cigar. “I’ve more than half a mind to. Look—there’s Karney—just coming in. What happened there, Charles? He seemed very sour when I mentioned you the other day.”
“We didn’t get on. I don’t know if you read Mervil’s papers, George—but they’ve taken a few cracks at me lately.”
“So I heard. Don’t read ’em myself. Don’t like papers that are always telling you about other people’s money but never tell you what the proprietor’s worth or what the editors are getting. Also, I want the news—not what Mervil and his friends are thinking about the news. Though I don’t want much of the news neither.” He finished his whisky, slowly, reluctantly, as if there might not be much more for him. “Well, I’ve asked you to come back, admitted we made a mistake, and you won’t, but never said I told you so—and that’s that. What are you up to now, Charles? Something, I can tell. Found a woman perhaps—eh?”
Ravenstreet replied that he had not found a woman and had not been looking for one.
“Young Treves told me something at lunch yesterday,” said Hathon. “Perhaps I oughtn’t to pass it on. It’s about a dashing smashing young woman called Mavis Somebody-or-other—a cousin of his wife’s, I think he said. Apparently you took her out once or twice, and told her that if she ever wanted a bit of help, financially, you might be ready to offer it. That right?”
“Yes—though what that’s got to do with Treves—or, for that matter, with you, George——”
“Steady, my boy! I haven’t come to the point yet. It seems that now she could do with that bit of help—it’s some scheme she has—but won’t ask you, she told Treves’s wife, because she feels she’s gone and fallen in love with you, Charles. Now I’d have said that would make her want to ask you. And as usual I’d have been wrong. They always do the opposite. Well, what do you think about that?”
“I’m glad you told me. I’ll write to her when I get back into the country. Perhaps she’ll find it easier if she has to write and tell me what she wants. Anyhow, I’ll keep my word.” And here they were, he thought, the choices—the Company again, Mavis, what next? Where was the appearance of pain and darkness, the choice that seemed to offer least that would be the best?
“What is it, then?” Hathon persisted. “You’re not going into anything with Mervil and Karney, I gather. Changed your mind about good works or politics?”
“No. Same answer as before. You’re rooting about for something that isn’t there, George.”
“But you wouldn’t tell me now that you’re dead. Remember—when we talked here before?”
“No, I wouldn’t. I’m alive all right. Not kicking yet, but alive. Three old men did it—one of ’em must have been years older than you, George, though he didn’t altogether look it. They came to stay with me—I say, by accident; they said, by design—and they disbelieved everything everybody tells us to believe nowadays. If they’re right, we’re all wrong. And if they’re wrong, they haven’t done badly out of it—you wouldn’t catch them telling anybody they were dead. Last week, they disappeared—into thin air. No, George, that’s all I propose to tell you. And I won’t have another drink, thank you. No, you stay here—I’ll make a quick dive through the power and wealth and see myself out.”
He left the place in a hurry, still looking the purposeful man of affairs, but hastening on his way to do nothing. Somehow he had not wanted to stay on at Broxley after the Magicians had gone. He had come up to town, staying again at his club, hoping vaguely to plan some long holiday, perhaps one of those long complicated journeys that look as if they mean something, so much favoured by politicians out of office and deposed industrial czars. But apart from filling his room with a lot of brightly-coloured and obviously over-optimistic travel booklets, he had done nothing about this holiday. July was sullenly burning away and August was in sight; one man after another at the club announced his immediate departure for the sea or the mountains, but most of these fellows had wives and families clamouring to be off; and Ravenstreet found little attraction in the idea of merely travelling in space alone. If only, he thought, there was some bureau in a back street that was demurely offering travel in time.
The message reached him one morning, toward the end of that week. Would he ring Purchester 457 and ask for Matron? When he did, Matron told him that a patient on the danger list in the Purchester Cottage Hospital, a Mrs. Slade, had been most urgently requesting a talk with him. Even though the line was bad, sounding as though somebody were frying sausages inside it, Matron was able to convey her cold distaste for this possible encounter between Mrs. Slade and Sir Charles Ravenstreet. He suggested there must be some mistake as he could not recall any Mrs. Slade. Matron replied icily that Mrs. Slade thought Sir Charles might remember her maiden name—Philippa Storer. Ignoring his stammering enquiries, she went on to say that if he came to the hospital as soon as possible, a few minutes talk might be arranged, but even a delay of twenty-four hours might be fatal. She gave him the impression that he must have been dodging this message for at least two days, probably in order not to interrupt an idle riotous way of life, and when he tried to tell her that he had only just received the message and would go down to Purchester at once, she cut him off. He packed a small over-night bag and drove as fast as he dared towards the Sussex coast. It was lunch time when he arrived at Purchester but he wasted no time on food and drink, driving straight out to the Cottage Hospital. It was a long low building, freshly painted and as dapper in the sunlight as a new toy, and it had some of the finest roses he had seen that summer.
Matron, a severe Abbess sort of woman in pale blue, regarded him coldly, and said that if he came back about half-past three a very short talk with Mrs. Slade might be possible. It was all most irregular, she added, only near relatives being allowed to visit patien
ts on the danger list, but Mrs. Slade had been so insistent that an exception had been made. At this moment a youngish doctor, a horsy fellow, bustled in, muttered something to Matron that sent her off immediately, and flicked open a cigarette case under Ravenstreet’s nose.
“Mrs. Slade? No hope there, poor woman. Inoperable carcinoma—secondaries all over the place. Yes—about half-past three she might be able to talk to you, though don’t expect much—she’ll still be dopey. Only thing we can do, of course. Her son was in this morning—and he’ll be round again this afternoon, I suppose. Don’t know him? Nice fellow—bit cranky perhaps—but no harm in him. Nice wife and kids too. Had lunch? Try the back room at The George—and tell ’em Dr. Murdock sent you.”
He told them Dr. Murdock had sent him, but if this brought him a better lunch, he was not aware of it, hardly noticing what he was eating. He was thinking about Philippa, drugged and dying. Passing time? If only Perperek, jeering at his tick-tock, were with him! Afterwards, he strolled round the pleasant little town, vaguely conscious of the sun’s warmth and the shadows and glitter of the streets, but feeling himself enclosed within some cold dream.
On his return to the hospital, he drew up behind the most dilapidated little car he had seen for months. Out of it tumbled two small children, fat and brown, and their mother, an indignant-looking girl with red hair and blazing green eyes. They were followed by a tall dark young man wearing a blue shirt and corduroy trousers, a young man with a grave, remote air. Ravenstreet accompanied this family into the waiting-room, where several people were sitting, saying nothing, staring at the blue sky that seemed to belong to another world. In their clear uninflected voices, the two children began asking about Granny. The little girl had her father’s eyes, dark and deep-set; the little boy, freckled and green-eyed, was like his mother. The other visitors, as if grateful for this reminder that life was still in bud, stopped staring out at the lost world to smile at Philippa’s son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren.
He followed a sister, starched and brisk, that Matron had sent to conduct him to Philippa’s small private room. “Now, Mrs. Slade,” she announced with the cast-iron cheerfulness of her kind, “here’s Sir Charles Ravenstreet at last. And I might manage a cup of tea for you both. I’ll see.”
The room with its shaded window seemed almost dark after the brilliant white corridor. It smelt sickly sweet. For a moment he thought wildly that the whole thing must be a mistake, for he could not recognise the white-haired ravaged woman who tried to smile at him. But then he saw that it was indeed Philippa, looking at him through, rather than with, eyes slow-moving and hollow with drugs. Most of her, he felt, was already somewhere else. Her voice was very weak, wandering in and out of audible sound; and he sat close to the bed, fighting to control himself.
“The delay wasn’t my fault, Philippa. I came as soon as I received your message—only this morning.”
“You—haven’t changed—so much, Charles.” She spoke with an obvious effort, as if her mouth were too dry. “I didn’t want you—to see me like this. But—there was something—I wanted to say—and nobody can say it for me.” She showed him the ghost of a smile.
“If there’s anything I can possibly do, Philippa,” he began. But she stopped him.
Had he noticed a tall dark young man——?
“With a red-haired wife and two delightful children? Yes—and I felt at once he was your son. He is, isn’t he?”
Her eyes gleamed for a second. “Yes—my son—Bryan.”
The sister came in with two cups of tea. She gave one to Ravenstreet, nodding brightly at him to suggest he was in for a great treat, then helped Philippa to take a few sips from the other cup. After warning them that the visitor would be allowed only a few more minutes, she went out.
“I liked the look of him very much, Philippa—in fact, all the little family. I want to get to know them.”
She smiled, a real smile this time. Probably the tea had refreshed her, for now her voice was stronger. “Yes—my son Bryan. And—Charles—your son too.”
“My God!” Then he understood it all. “That last day we had in the cottage, you wanted to tell me—but couldn’t. That was the hidden thing, the secret. Of course I’d no idea then there was anything. I discovered it quite recently. You see, Philippa, I was—oh!—hypnotised or something, and I re-lived that last day, when we quarrelled because I insisted upon going back to the works. It’s true—I re-lived every moment of it. In what was described to me as Time Alive—still there, all of it, not gone. And that’s it—you were going to have a child—and then couldn’t tell me——”
“I never meant to tell you—and then suddenly I had to——”
“Of course. Does he know I’m his father?”
“No. Though I think he’s guessed something. But I had to see for myself—how you’d feel——”
“I’m glad, Philippa. It’s strange news—but wonderful.”
“Have you any children—I mean, any other children—Charles?”
“No. And my wife died some years ago.”
“You’ve nobody—then?”
“Nobody, Philippa. But now I have. Why—those two are my grandchildren. We’re a family—good God!”
She nodded slowly, closing her eyes. He did not feel she was dismissing him, only that she had made a great effort and was now exhausted. So he talked to give her time to recover. “I didn’t simply remember that day, Philippa. I lived it all over again, as I was then but also as I am now. It’s hard to explain, but that’s how it was. Everything’s still there, nothing’s gone, but if we make the right sort of effort, these people say, we can change it. Please remember that, Philippa—nothing’s gone, nothing’s lost. I know now that’s true. That day when I should have stayed instead of going back to the works, when you should have told me what had happened, that day’s still there, and if we can remember—then we can change it. Look—everything’s different from what most of us think it is—we’re just deceiving ourselves in the dreariest possible fashion—condemning ourselves——” But there he stopped, for he could not believe she was still listening. Perhaps she had drifted away altogether, although she was still breathing. He rose, trembling, uncertain what to do.
Then her eyes opened wide, and now for a moment or two there seemed no sickness and death in them; they were alight with gay intelligence, almost mischievous. “Another man spoke after you stopped, Charles.” Her voice was stronger too, nearly exultant. “I heard him quite clearly. He was a foreigner—and laughing as if nothing mattered. He said—and I’m quite sure of this, please believe me, Charles—he said that you knew now we didn’t live in tick-tock—yes, that’s what he said—tick-tock—not in tick-tock but in time alive.”
“Perperek!” he cried. “That was Perperek, my dear. Telling us all’s well——”
There was a noise behind him. The life seemed to drain out of Philippa’s face. “Oh—no—Matron, please,” she muttered, her eyes closing again.
“You must go now,” the Matron told him. “I thought you would realise that you mustn’t begin shouting at a patient in this condition.” She was holding the door open for him, dismissing him with freezing contempt. He heard her voice, gentler now: “Don’t worry, Mrs. Slade. Doctor will be here shortly——”
He walked slowly along the clean hard corridor, as bright and sad as the new world we have made, and somebody, perhaps it was Dr. Murdock, spoke to him, but he shook his head and went blindly past. He knew it would not do, that he was being unjust, but he hated this place and all the people who served it. Here, he felt, was one of our temples of destructive time and death. The patient must be hurried away from any opening vista of life, to be kept quiet, prepared for the mortuary, the undertakers, the coffin and the grave. This was, after all, our goal. We sentenced ourselves to wait in the condemned cell.
“I’m Bryan Slade,” said the young man. He was standing outside the waiting-room door. “You’re Sir Charles Ravenstreet, aren’t you? You’ve
been seeing my mother.”
“Yes. The Matron just turned me out. I heard her say something about the doctor coming shortly. I’m afraid I don’t know when they’ll let you see her. But you know about that, I suppose. I’m going down to book a room at The George. I’d be glad if you would come and see me there. It’s important or I wouldn’t worry you now. Any time up to midnight will do—or even after that.”
It was about ten o’clock, the end of a day that dragged on interminably, when he came, to join Ravenstreet in the small empty lounge and to accept a beer. “I took my wife and the children home, had some food and then went back,” he explained. “They let me see her for a few minutes, that’s all. They know I’m here. They don’t know how long she’ll last out—but not long, they think.” He gave Ravenstreet a curious searching look that was very disturbing.
Ravenstreet moved uneasily. The room was cool enough but seemed to have no air in it. Loud voices came from the bar outside, but they made no sense. Wondering what to say, he stared hard at a notice of a Young Farmers’ Rally, as if it might contain important news. “I hope the little talk we had didn’t take too much out of her.”
“That was probably the hospital view. I think it did her a great deal of good. Some things you said to her.” Bryan hesitated a moment, raising his eyebrows in a way that suggested wonder rather than scepticism. “Somebody else spoke to her too, she told me. From a distance. She seemed quite clear and certain about it.”
“I think he did, you know. She might possibly have found his peculiar turns of speech in my mind, but I don’t think so. I know the man and am sure he has some strange knowledge and powers, and I believe he linked himself to me in some way and then spoke directly to her. It sounds fantastic, I know, but you must take my word for it.”
The young man nodded, hesitated again, then smiled rather shyly, looking so like his mother in a certain mood that Ravenstreet found it startling. “She says you’re my father.”
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