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.
I closed the book and pressed it between my palms. I wanted to write the truth. I wanted everything he had told me to be there, in black and white. Lest I forget.
But it was impossible, and I knew it. Even if I could have found the words.
I opened the exercise book again, searching thro
ugh the pages for the first time I’d said I was happy here, for the first time I had used the word love. It came on the 17th of June. I ripped the page out, and the next, on and on until I came to yesterday’s scrawl. I ripped that out too, so that there was nothing, after the 16th of June, but a fan of torn margins and a blank page.
I crumpled up the loose pages and put them in the ashtray. Then I set fire to them with Jack’s silver lighter. They burned with a brighter, thicker flame than Fraser’s letter had – although that had been in sunlight, a long time ago. He had been right, after all; I’d thought his turn of phrase exaggerated, even sensational, but he had simply been telling me the truth. I wished I could be grateful for that.
I watched the pages burn. They filled the room with whitish, acrid smoke that billowed in the breeze from the window and overwhelmed the scent of roses. When there was nothing left but ash, I took up the exercise book again, and the pencil. In a shaky, childish hand, I wrote:
21st June, 1936. Tyme’s End.
REMEMBER.
I put my face into my hands, and wept.
.
The hours passed. When I raised my head, finally, the first thing I saw was my father’s photograph. It gave me a kind of strength; for the first time in my life, I was glad that he had been ordinary, that he had died along with so many other men. I had never thought that it would be reassuring to imagine him shot down in Flanders mud, but now, somehow, it was.
I took the photograph in my hand, tried to smooth out the crease across the corner, and put it into my pocket. I closed my suitcase and ran my fingers over my father’s faded initials. Outside, the sky was getting light behind the trees and the breeze coming through the window was cold and fresh, blowing away the smoke and the sweetness of the night air. I stood up and turned off the electric light. The room was dim, full of steady shadows. The world beyond the window was silent and touched with a silvery violet colour, like a painting.
I looked round, taking in every detail: the gramophone, the overflowing ashtray, the discarded newspaper on the sofa. I thought that perhaps I’d never be so happy, or so unhappy, as I’d been here. I wondered if I should ever see Tyme’s End again and even now the thought made me sorry.
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