The Many Lives of John Stone

by Linda Buckley-Archer

  The Spaniard looked at me sorrowfully, with all the respect due to grieving relatives—except that these deaths had taken place fifteen years ago, and I had only that night learned of the existence of Juan Pedro, his allegedly long-lived race, and our alleged relationship. Nevertheless, the idea that, in the act of coming into the world, this baby (I could not accept that it was me) had caused the death of Berthe, provoked in me an acute distress. My throat constricted and I crawled farther into the inner cave, focusing my attention on the long line of journals bound in Juan Pedro’s red leather. I ran my finger along their spines. That there were so many was a measure, I supposed, of his longevity. The Spaniard crawled in after me, and pulled a journal at random from the shelf.

  “Queen Mariana of Spain often confided in your father and had she learned of their existence would have doubtless taken his journals. I smuggled them out of your father’s house the day he died and hid them here. You will never own anything more precious.”

  I made no comment. He opened the volume and placed it on the floor between us. “Look,” he urged, and held up a candle, taking care to avoid dripping tallow on the precious pages. Reluctantly I lowered my eyes and saw for the first time Juan Pedro’s beautiful hand though I understood not a single word of his elegant and finely drawn script. Wonderfully executed drawings peppered the densely written pages: There was a woman’s face in three-quarters view, her eyes shrewd and lively, looking out at me from the journal, and a sketch of a ship, a glorious Spanish galleon in full sail. A growing emotion, a fragile thing—which I took pains to conceal—took me by surprise. I reached out my fingers and stroked the marks Juan Pedro had formed long ago on the coarse paper.

  “And what color leather will you use to bind my journals?” I asked. “As that, I suppose, is your purpose. Blue perhaps? Or yellow?”

  My tone was harsh and mocking—the false face of pent-up distress. I saw the Spaniard wince. “It is not a question of my purpose, Jean-Pierre. Your father, and your grandfather before him, saw the acquisition of knowledge and experience over long years as their purpose and, I believe, their personal salvation. You are young and it is enough that you know of the existence of their journals. I will contribute no longer to this enterprise. I hope that you will consider following the example set by your forebears, but you will, as we all do, forge your own path in life.”

  “Then I wish to return to Versailles as soon as possible,” I said, “for I would prefer the company of Isabelle d’Alembert and the man I believe to be my father, to that of journals written by dead men who are nothing to me.”

  The Spaniard’s patience was at an end. His face turned thunderous. “You will show some respect, Jean-Pierre, if not to me—a true Friend who has devoted his entire life to your family—then to Juan Pedro and Alfonso, whose blood, whether you care to acknowledge it or not, you carry in your veins! And as for returning to Versailles, I cannot permit it.”

  “And by what right do you confine me to your house?”

  The Spaniard took a deep breath to calm himself. “Listen to me, Jean-Pierre, I have no proof, because there is a possibility that he stumbled and hit his head against the corner of a wall, yet I am convinced that Juan Pedro was murdered. Someone knew who he was. Someone brought down a rock upon his head. That is the reason I made arrangements for you to be brought up in France by a man who does not know your true identity. It is the reason I left my home, and everything I knew, in order to come to the court of the Sun King, to prepare the way for you. And now someone has attempted to murder you in precisely the same way. Surely you can understand why I am reluctant to allow you to return to Versailles?”

  “You think someone tried to kill me because I am Juan Pedro’s son?”

  “I do.”

  I shook my head. “No. I can’t believe it—”

  “I hope I am wrong. . . . There is one last thing I must admit to you.”

  I stared at him, doubting I had the strength to bear any more revelations. And so, calmly, and without a trace of remorse, the Spaniard said that, given the high probability that I was sempervivens, he judged it unfair, both to Isabelle d’Alembert and to myself, to allow any intimacy between us to develop. He had intercepted and destroyed my letter to her. He had also burned the two letters that Isabelle had sent to me. The impact on me of this last admission was instant and violent. As I lunged forward the Spaniard grabbed hold of my wrists and forced me back down. He was the stronger by far and he looked pityingly into my eyes—which I found unbearable—and he said: “You must feel that I have stripped everything away from you. Your home, your family, your first love—”

  I did not have the strength to reply.

  “And I am sorry for it. Many men would kill for what, at this instant, you would throw back in my face. Yet I do understand. I have imagined this moment for many years. Please believe, at least, that I understand your pain.”

  I turned my back on him and the Spaniard fell silent for several minutes. At last he said: “I shall be your Friend and teacher for as long you desire it, but you are the master of your own fate. In the morning I shall return with a horse. For now I will take my leave of you. I can see that you wish to be alone. Good night, Jean-Pierre.”

  He left the cave. I heard his footfalls as he returned to the world. When I was alone again, I rolled into a ball at the foot of my father’s and my grandfather’s journals, pinched out all the candles, and stared into the impenetrable darkness.

  Daddy Longlegs

  As Martha scrapes out the last spoonfuls of Sussex pond pudding from the basin, they hear Spark’s footsteps crunch past the back door in the direction of the footbridge. John Stone notes the hopeful gleam that comes to Jacob’s eye and holds his gaze. He explains—just in case anyone happened to be wondering—that Spark intended to call her mother. She will doubtless be walking up the lane to get a signal for her cell phone (a strange activity, also beloved of John Stone in recent years and to which Martha and Jacob have become accustomed). Spark isn’t jumping ship. Not yet, at any rate.

  Jacob rises from the table, sucking sticky lemon syrup noisily from one finger, and nods his thanks to Martha. The remaining pair sit together at the long kitchen table, Martha folding and refolding her checked napkin while John Stone stabs at a curl of lemon rind with his fork and moves it around his plate. Both are lost in their own thoughts. Presently Martha scrapes back her chair and announces that she is going to put the peelings on the compost heap. John Stone offers to do it for her, but Martha shushes him. He watches her go and thinks it will be good for her to have a young woman in the house for a while.

  He stands at the open kitchen window, sipping mint tea. The evening sky is milky, almost pearlescent, and the sun burns red through gaps in the trees. Resting his cup on the draining board for a moment, he holds out both hands, fingers straight and slightly spread apart, checking for tremors—a habit he must learn to control before Martha starts noticing. Spark was good company this afternoon. He enjoyed her conversation and the glimpses of her character it afforded. She strikes him as wise beyond her years. But then, she’s had to cope with more than she should: the death of one parent and the demands of another. And if Spark is the image of her mother at the same age, at least she shows no sign of having inherited Thérèse’s personality—that particular combination of dazzle and manipulation that made her so difficult a companion. Indeed, Spark seems to possess a well-balanced disposition, and—unlike her mother—is an amateur when it comes to the art of concealing her emotions. True, she did not admit to having taken his picture earlier, but the contrite expression on her face when he brought up the subject of photography all but made him laugh out loud. The “cook of sorts, on the coast” (as Thérèse described Spark’s father) was probably an agreeable sort of character. Difficult and complex feelings rise up inside John Stone, feelings that he immediately suppresses. Fate may have seen fit to deny him the companionship of a wife and the consolation of a line that will continue after him, but he learned long ag
o the lesson of not dwelling on a thing that cannot be changed. Jacob makes no secret of resenting Spark on account of her parentage but John Stone, who has better reason, will rise above such base and shortsighted emotions.

  What must Spark be saying about his bizarre household to the woman she believes to be her mother? The girl is clearly devoted to this Mrs. Park—he only hopes the woman appreciates how lucky she is. John Stone feels a sudden stab of guilt and questions, for the first time, the rightness—for Spark—of bringing her here to Stowney House. But the imperative of finding a new Friend means that it’s a little late in the day to be entertaining doubts. He runs his fingers distractedly through his hair. How is he going to manage this?

  Outside, the swifts swoop and dive. It is the sound of summer. And, thanks to the treacherous hook of memory, it is also a sound that transports him to the day Isabelle died. Afterward he rode into the fields and stood with bowed head, statue-still and thigh-deep in a fast-flowing stream, paralyzed with grief and incomprehension. Out of nowhere, scores of these beautiful creatures suddenly arrived, surrounding him with their flitting forms, engulfing him with their sibilant cries. He had believed himself to be familiar with death until the day he confronted Isabelle’s lifeless body, then he understood that death remains a stranger until it takes away someone we love. Yet, just as Isabelle had told him it would, his heart had continued to beat. And here he is, centuries later, facing his own end—and all the responsibilities that brings. Please let him not have made a terrible error by inviting the girl here.

  John Stone reaches up for the bottle of Armagnac on the cracked oak lintel. Someone has carved a date into the blackened wood: 1695 (he likes to think it was the Spaniard, but he does not know for sure). As he pulls out the cork with a satisfying pop, Martha flounces back into the kitchen, eyebrows knitted together in fury. She disappears into the pantry and emerges with a broom and a small butterfly net.

  “What is it?”

  “Spark’s room is full of daddy longlegs. Jacob’s been in there. I saw a cunning look on his face while she was batting one away earlier. He’s a bad man, so he is. And you can be sure I’ve told him what I think of his antics.”

  John Stone hurries out after her. Jacob has switched on every light and has left the French doors wide-open. Martha caught him standing in the middle of the room swinging around the stinking carcass of some roadkill that he had found. Martha chased him out, but now there are horse flies, moths, and a quantity of daddy longlegs circling the room, colliding with the sparkling chandelier. There are also dozens of white maggots wriggling and squirming about on the floor. John Stone sweeps up the maggots while Martha leaps up high into the air, expertly catching the winged creatures in her net. Afterward she squirts lavender water about the room, hoping to camouflage any lingering odor of rotting flesh. By the time they’re done they can hear Spark’s footsteps crunching down the drive. John Stone switches off all the lights and they slip out into the dusk, closing the doors silently behind them.

  * * *

  The scent of burning tobacco leads John Stone to Jacob. He is smoking a clay pipe in the kitchen garden, the stem clenched between his teeth as he crouches in the earth, training pea shoots up a cane wigwam. He lifts his head and regards John Stone defiantly.

  “She’ll blab,” says Jacob. “Send her home before we all have cause to regret it.”

  John Stone shakes his head. “No.”

  “I’ll drive her off if I can—”

  “Surely you can see that we need a new Friend?”

  “I can see. It’s you who’s blind. We’ve got your lawyer.”

  “And he’s over sixty. Can’t you give her a chance?”

  Jacob stands up and walks toward him, resting the pipe between horny thumb and forefinger, and fixing him with his pale eyes. “What’s changed that makes you so reckless now?” For all that Jacob is mostly hot air, John Stone feels the hairs rise at the back of his neck. He smells the tobacco on his breath. “There’s something you’re not telling us.”

  “I’ve told you all you need to know,” says John Stone. He won’t reveal his illness. Not here, not now.

  “And why does she have to live here?” Jacob is too close, and speaking too loudly. “She’s Thérèse’s daughter! If I’d known who she was, I’d have—”

  “You’d have done what, Jacob?”

  “I’d have wrung her neck, years back, when first I clapped eyes on her.”

  John Stone exclaims angrily. “It’s my late wife you’re talking about Jacob, for all her faults—”

  “Wife!” Jacob snorts. “How long did she ever spend under your roof? She’d blow in on a storm and be gone as soon as the sun shone—”

  “That’s enough, Jacob!”

  “And every last time she came it’d set Martha back. You don’t know the half of it.”

  John Stone pushes at Jacob’s chest with the flats of his palms; Jacob’s eyes narrow, and he starts to push back. Suddenly the two men are locked into each other like rutting stags. John Stone becomes conscious that a part of him has been spoiling for a fight since he first talked to Jacob about Spark. However, as Martha has reminded him often enough, there’s a reason Jacob has survived as long as he has. John Stone is no match for him and his feet start to slide backward in the dirt path. It occurs to him too that Thérèse would laugh out loud at the thought of him defending her in this way. He breaks eye contact and steps backward.

  “You know, my friend, if Spark comes to any harm, Martha will never forgive you.” It is the truth. Jacob does not reply. “Can’t you see that I’m doing this for your own good?” He nearly adds, you fool, but stops himself in time. Jacob’s sense of humor (and he has a good one in the right mood) does not extend to his mental states. “I swear I will keep you and Martha safe.”

  When Jacob pointedly takes out his penknife and starts to whittle a piece of wood, John Stone decides to leave him to his sculpting and retreats down the path. He reminds himself that there is a reason why Jacob behaves as he does—not that this makes him any easier to deal with. Out of the three of them, Jacob is the oldest; he is also the only one of them to have been brought up in a community of his own kind. Alas, the defining experience of Jacob’s life was to have witnessed, as an adolescent, the bloody slaughter of his family and everyone he knew. As sole survivor, the massacre taught him to conceal his difference, trust no one, and keep moving. Even now Jacob insists that he would have moved on long ago, if it weren’t for Martha asking him to stay. Stowney House has helped to heal him, but even so, as his nightmares testify, Jacob still battles with the fear that, sooner or later, “they” will find them out—and come for them again.

  Somewhere in the orchard a blackbird is singing, celebrating the close of another day. Its liquid notes rise up into the dusk. John Stone can’t resist one last attempt to make his case and turns back. He finds Jacob taking a long, slow draw of his pipe. The tobacco in the bowl crackles and glows red in the gloom, illuminating for an instant his rawboned face.

  “Do you remember how it was when they invented the telegraph? How it changed everything? Suddenly we knew what was happening on the other side of the world, and people on the other side of the world knew what was happening to us. It gave us a sense of who we were, and where we were, and what we were.”

  Jacob puts down his penknife. “What are you trying to say, John?”

  “That Stowney House is almost an island, but not quite. Without a bridge, we’re lost. I tell you, Jacob, not since the telegraph came have I sensed such a shift in how people think about themselves. Spark’s generation is the first who are strangers to solitude and silence. They know only noise and a constant need to be connected. Despite my efforts to adapt I find myself floundering. Spark could be your—our—link to a new world.”

  Predictably, Jacob grunts. “People are people. Spark will blab. Perhaps she won’t mean to, but she will.”

  “I think you’re wrong—”

  Jacob isn’t listening to him. �
��They’ll pin us up like butterflies, and poke at us. And they won’t stop till they’ve worked us out. I’d throw myself in the river before I let that happen, and Martha with me.”

  “I won’t let that happen to you. Haven’t I kept you safe all this time? Trust me.” But he can see that Jacob can’t. And if John Stone were in his shoes, would he?

  Headlights

  John Stone, it appears, likes to drive. Spark grips the edge of the tan leather seat as they hurtle down narrow, sandy-edged lanes toward the coast. It is her first time in a convertible: The wind slams into her face and plows shifting white furrows through Martha’s short, black hair in front of her. Spark, to her surprise, is the only one to wear her safety belt. John Stone’s reactions are sharp. Twice now he’s swerved to avoid rabbits, and both times Spark screwed her eyes shut tight. When he brakes, going round a blind corner, he shouts: Brace yourselves! And the others laugh!

  Martha and John Stone start to sing folk songs. Even Jacob consents to join in after a while. Spark, who knows none of the words, feels as embarrassed as the time a Spanish guitarist serenaded Mum when they took her to a tapas bar for her birthday. At the same time she is impressed: Her companions can actually sing. Even Jacob’s rasping voice is somehow transformed into something melodic. Their voices soar. They know how to harmonize. They clap their hands, beat out a rhythm on the steering wheel, the dashboard, stamp their feet. When, finally, she dares clap in time with them, John Stone smiles at her in the rearview mirror. As the car cuts a track across the flat landscape, it is as though their music is being shed into the winds like thistledown.

  They park in a field and then walk in single file for a few minutes, John Stone leading the way, through dunes where tufts of marram grass spike through powdery sand. There is a steep path cut into a crumbling, brick-colored cliff that is home to a colony of sand martins. It is high tide, though the sea is retreating, and they decide to sunbathe for a while. John, Martha, and Jacob lay out their mats in a line on the remaining ribbon of shell-strewn beach. They strip under Martha’s modesty towels, which are gathered at the neck, standing on one leg, holding on to one another for balance, pulling off pants and socks and handing each other their bathing costumes. Then, once they are changed, and like a routine they have followed a hundred times before, they all lie flat on their backs, tail to toe, toe to tail, their arms at their sides, their eyes closed tight, an expression on all their tanned faces as calm as deep water.