Circles of Time

by Phillip Rock

  “Sorry to burst in on you at three in the morning. But it’s Charles. He’s gone.”

  Mr. Lassiter had brought Charles a glass of hot milk shortly before ten o’clock that night, as was his custom. Charles liked to sit in bed to drink it and then would go off to sleep. It was an unvarying routine. Mr. Lassiter would then go to his own room in the spacious apartment, read a detective novel until midnight or shortly thereafter, and look in on his charge before going to bed.

  “I looked in on him about twelve-thirty,” he said, standing in the front hall, telling his story to Martin and William. “He seemed to be sleeping, so I went down to the servants’ hall, it being New Year’s Eve, and joined in the bit of celebration there until about two, two-thirty. When I went up to bed I looked in on him again and saw the bed was empty. I thought he might have been in the W.C., but he wasn’t. Then I went into the sitting room and noticed the door into the side corridor was ajar. Closed it myself earlier, so I knew he’d gone out.”

  “Where does that corridor lead to?” Martin asked him.

  “To a short flight of stairs. There’s a door at the bottom opening into the garden. That door was ajar, too.”

  “Has he ever done this before?”

  “No, sir. Never. He’ll take a walk by himself in the daytime once in a while, but he’s never done it at night.”

  Lord Stanmore came into the hall followed by half a dozen of the male servants, all of them dressed for the cold. Some were carrying electric torches.

  “We’ll pick up more torches and lanterns at the stables,” the earl said grimly. “The grooms have been woken and we’ll fan out and search for him. Do you have any idea what he was wearing, Lassiter?”

  “Not much, near as I can judge. I looked through his wardrobe and his winter coat’s still hanging there. Robe and pajamas, I’d say … and carpet slippers.”

  “Good God,” the earl muttered. “It must be freezing out there this time of morning.” He turned to one of the servants. “Round up a couple of blankets, and don’t forget to bring the brandy.”

  They stood out on the terrace and a sense of fear gripped all of them. Scud clouds raced across the moon and it was bitterly cold. The earl turned up the collar of his overcoat and glared off across the dark gardens toward the inky shadow line of Burgate Hill and the mass of Leith Woods.

  “That’s where he’d go. Leith Woods.”

  “I think so,” Lassiter said. “We walked there this morning, sir, and he lingered a long time.”

  They moved off through the gardens and down to the stables where the grooms were waiting for them, their electric torches winking in the darkness.

  “We’ll spread out when we reach the woods,” the earl told them. “Call his name loudly and search the undergrowth carefully with your torches.”

  He strode off, the others hurrying along behind him in silence. Down the bridle path and then over a stile and across the fields, the frosted grass crunching under their feet. The woods loomed in the distance, gray-black and sullen under the moon, skeletal branches of wintry trees ingrained against the sky. An owl hooted far away on Burgate Hill. And then they heard it, deep in the wood, the sound of it cutting to the heart, rooting every man in his tracks—the sharp crack and thudding echo of a gunshot.

  IT HAD BEEN coming to him all day in brief, disjointed flashes: images and words … the sounds of voices. All dimly remembered for the briefest of moments. One image had been so vivid he had sat under a tree in Leith Woods, holding his head in his hands, struggling to keep the image alive, in focus—to sort it out and give it meaning. But it had escaped him, as all the images escaped him, and they had walked back to the house for breakfast.

  After breakfast the images had come again, quite strongly and with increasing frequency. Walking slowly around in the sitting room, he had touched the covers of books on the shelves, feeling keenly that he had touched the books many times … in some hazy past. Here? In this place? He did not know. Scraps of thought flooded him, but he could not make sense of the patterns. A jumbled whirl that made his head ache. He had spent most of the afternoon sleeping, but even his dreams had been disturbing—a stream of swiftly moving pictures, like motion-picture film running crazily through a projector … like the time at the barracks when he had run a Broncho Billy cowboy film as a treat for the men and something had gone wrong with the machine—everything speeded up and the men laughing and shouting … What barracks? What men?

  There had been music in the house tonight, and the people who had come to visit him had been the people he had been seeing all day, moving in and out of his thoughts. Lying in bed after drinking the warm milk, he had remembered a tune. Lilting and beautiful; he had whispered its name—“‘Charmaine’ … ‘Charmaine.’” Lovely. A haunting sound played on a gramophone in a farmhouse … and they had marched to the tiny village in the summer, heat waves rising from the dusty road and the men singing …

  Here we are, here we are, here we are again. All

  good pals together and jolly good company.

  The voices of the men loud in his ears before fading away. But who were those men? … That village … where was it exactly?

  He had lain in bed in the darkness staring into a void, searching for one solid thing to grasp on to.

  “I was …” he had said, “a soldier … in the farmhouse … and there was a gramophone … which we played … and then … we went up to the line … and … took over trenches near Fricourt.”

  But where did all that take place? And when? And who was he?

  It was always quiet in the woods. One could think calmly there. One could, perhaps, by sitting very still, put all of the tiny pieces together and make sense of them. Draw all the fragments of image and sound into a cohesive whole.

  In the woods—deep among the trees.

  HE SENSED DIMLY that he was cold—colder than he had ever been before. He tried to tuck his naked, bleeding feet under the bramble-ripped fringes of his dressing gown. A ragged man, he was thinking, seated in the wilderness.

  “But what man … who?”

  Only the owls answered, calling from the branches far above his head.

  “I am …” he whispered. “I am …”

  He was called by a name. Charles … Charles Greville, or Major Greville. But the name meant nothing to him. There was no solid person behind that name. It was like being given a number, a depersonalized string of digits. And yet … someone … a shape of substance was rising from the murk.

  A twig snapped not too far away. And then another. He stiffened against the trunk of the tree and strained to listen. Again—closer now—moving past. He dropped silently to his hands and knees and began to crawl with infinite care through the underbrush and the piles of dead leaves.

  To make a sound was death because Thompson, out on patrol one night in the wood, had sneezed and the Fritz machine gun in Mild-and-Bitter sap had opened up and four of his men had been killed and three others wounded, including Thompson with a nice Blighty in the shoulder. Or one could touch a hidden wire running to the Boche trench which would set a tin can moving and old Fritz would toss stick grenades on you. No … no … silent as the grave was the ticket … slow movements of elbows and knees … feeling ahead of you with your fingers as you went … cautious … cautious … never mind the barbed wire that tore the flesh … never mind the slimy feel of a dead man’s face....

  He had reached a clearing and lay flat in the icy grass. Shadows and pale moonlight in the glade. The shadows moved slowly, keeping together, gliding soundlessly through the moonlight. He stared at them, straining to hear … and then it came—a little whisper of death only a few yards off to his right, the click of brass against oiled steel, the snap of a bolt. But not France. Not no-man’s land—Abingdon … Leith Woods …

  He rose screaming to his feet—“Bastard—you bastard!”

  A rifle cracked and a herd of deer scattered, hooves thundering on the hard ground, crashing off into the woods. He heard men cursing
and running, two or three of them, blundering through the underbrush. He took a few faltering steps and shouted after them—“Bastards … bastards!”

  His words echoed back and then faded. The sounds of running faded also and it was silent in the glade, so silent he could hear the beating of his heart. He stumbled on a few more paces and nearly tripped over the gunnysacks and ropes the men had left behind. He sank down beside them and began to wrap the stiff sacks around his feet and legs. He would die before morning if he didn’t do it. His fingers were stiff as bone and they bled against the rough hemp, but he wrapped himself in the sacks and sat quietly, waiting for the dawn. He was sitting there when a light flashed across him and someone began shouting. He was so cold—so terribly tired—but he managed to raise his head and smile into the rays of a torch.

  “I’m Charles Greville … live at … the Pryory. Some … bastards tried to poach … my father’s deer.”

  Book Two

  JOURNEYING

  1922

  VII

  IT SEEMED STRANGE to Ross to be back in England. He had never felt so much as a twinge of homesickness, had barely given the place a single thought in six years, but as the tugs pushed the big liner against the Mersey tide and eased her into the Cunard dock, he had felt a lump rise in his throat at the sight of the Union Jack fluttering atop one of the buildings.

  Liverpool in February, sleet blowing in the wind, hissing into the dirty brown river. The buildings of gray stone and sooty black brick. A cheerless-looking place, old and tumbled together. Narrow, twisting streets. He remembered Liverpool and the country around it—Birkenhead across the channel, and Runcorn and Widnes further upriver. Had worked his itinerant trade along the Mersey a long time ago and could not think back on those particular times with much fondness. Still, it was the old flag. It was England.

  He shared a taxi with Mr. Mayhew. He had met Mr. Mayhew on the second night out from New York, the ship rolling and pitching in a bitter northeaster. They had been just about the only passengers showing up for dinner and had joined company. Afterward, they had gone into the saloon for brandy and cigars. Mr. Mayhew was a man in his sixties and owned a large gearworks in Bradford. He sold his gears to the Jordan Motor Car Company in Cleveland, and to the Apperson Brothers and Studebaker, among others, and so they had common ground for conversation. Ross had worked for Rolls-Royce and had been sent by them to America early in 1916 to oversee the building under license of their aircraft engines. He had worked for nearly three years at the Chambers Motor Factory in Cleveland, a concern that Mayhew knew well. A friendship developed between them that lasted the voyage—and beyond.

  “Have you stayed at the Adelphi before, Ross?”

  “No, I don’t believe I have.”

  “My home whenever I’m in Liverpool—which is often. First-rate service, I can assure you. And if one has a taste for mutton chops—which I confess I certainly do—the Adelphi cooks them to a turn.”

  Ross suppressed a smile and looked out the window of the taxi at the early-evening traffic crush in Derby Square. Have you stayed at the Adelphi before, Ross? Not bloody likely.

  It was as he imagined it would be—a marble and mahogany lobby, crystal chandelier hanging from the domed ceiling and reflecting tiny shards of light onto red carpeting. An orchestra was playing somewhere in the cavernous, gilded place. Muted sounds of violins. A tinkle of cutlery. Music with the mutton chops. No, he had never stayed at the Adelphi when in Liverpool. It had been sixpence a night for a hard bed in those days—and three pennyworth of rancid fish and chips for his supper.

  He felt a momentary sense of ill ease as he approached the desk, wondering if the dapper, smiling clerk would see through the trappings of well-cut suit and topcoat, the expensive shoes and Stetson fedora and recognize instantly the lower-middle-class man wearing them. But the clerk only continued to smile and turn the registry book toward him.

  “Welcome to the Adelphi Hotel, sir.”

  “Thank you.” He signed: James A. Ross—Coronado, California, U.S.A.

  The clerk glanced at the book. “I say, sir. Must be very nice there in February.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Will you be staying with us long, sir?”

  “Just overnight, I’m sorry to say.”

  Well, that was a lie, but his room was comfortable and reasonably warm and the mutton chops were everything Mr. Mayhew had said they were. After dinner, the two men went into the bar for brandy.

  Mr. Mayhew took out his cigar case and extended it to Ross. He had grown quite fond of the sturdy, sandy-haired, freckled young man.

  “You seem a bit on the subdued side, lad. It’s being back in England. Am I correct?”

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  Mr. Mayhew bent forward and offered the flame from his cigar lighter. “Oh, I think you do. I know America. God knows I’ve been there enough times, from Maine to California and most of the states in between. Know the land and know the people. Know Old Blighty for that matter, too. You’re a bit—well, ill at ease in the Adelphi. I can tell.”

  Ross shifted slightly in his seat and looked down at his hands. His nails were well manicured but of a darkish color. His hands were scrupulously cleaned, washed with soap and rubbed with pumice, but there were minute black lines on the palms that would never be scrubbed away. They were the hands of a man who had worked more than half of his thirty years with oil, grease, and machines.

  “I wouldn’t say I was ill at ease exactly.”

  “A hotel like this …” Mayhew leaned back and waved his cigar at the room—the oak walls and leather chairs, the shiny glass behind the bar. “A place like this to have a drink. An establishment for gentlemen, Ross—for toffs.”

  Ross looked up, scowling, then saw the look of friendly amusement on the older man’s face. He smiled shyly. “Is it so obvious I don’t fit in?”

  “Yes, it is—but only to you. I’m sure you wouldn’t think twice of going to a fine hotel in New York, Detroit … San Diego, Ross. That hotel in Coronado. You’ve been there, surely.”

  “I live there. My room has a balcony and faces the ocean.”

  “Facing the blue Pacific.” Mayhew sighed and puffed for a moment on his cigar. “Why, you live like a king in California, but feel like a navvy in dirty, smoky, freezing Liverpool.”

  “Hardly a king,” Ross muttered, shaking his head. “I don’t pay that much for the room.”

  “It’s attitude, not price. You live in one of the most gracious hotels in the world and never question your right to live there. And no one else questions it either, even if you were to drop an ‘h’ or forget to sound your ‘g’s. I’ve known many an American millionaire who chewed tobacco and spat on the ground and never saw the inside of a schoolroom after the age of eleven. A land with a different set of values, Ross. Any man who has the talent for making money or getting things done ranks above a duke there. You’re an American now, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Got my citizenship papers just before I left California.”

  “Well, there you are, then. Lean back, dear boy, smoke your cigar, sip your brandy, and act like the bloomin’ toff you are!”

  LIVERPOOL TO LONDON. A first-class carriage. He watched the towns flash past the windows. Stoke-on-Trent and Longton. Stafford and Birmingham. Slag heaps and mills. Row houses with slate roofs stretching away endlessly, street after street, featureless and drab.

  He had grown up in one of those houses, raised by an aunt and uncle, long dead. His future had been set to everyone’s satisfaction, including his own, the day he turned thirteen. It had been on that day that his uncle, a foreman at Lockhart & Whitby, had taken him to the sprawling engineworks in Wolverhampton to begin his years of apprenticeship at five shillings for a sixty-hour workweek. At the end of six years he had become a journeyman mechanic and brought home one pound eight shillings in his pay envelope, the money placed in his aunt’s hand and seven shillings returned to him.

  “You’r
e a good lad, Jamie.”

  But then what was it? Spring? Riding his bike one Sunday afternoon in the golden country between the Severn and Wyre forest, from the top of a hill seeing westward the Shropshire dales and, over his shoulder, east by north, the haze of Birmingham, Sandwell, Wolverhampton staining the sky even on the sabbath. Something had called to him, a wild gypsy voice, to make him pack his tools the next morning and tie the canvas bag to the tail of his bike and pedal off into the unknown.

  “The lad’s an ass,” had been his uncle’s only comment.

  He found that he could make more than one pound eight shillings in a week cycling through the west country, following the course of the Severn—Stourport and Worcester, Tewkesbury, Gloucester, and on into south Wales. Not a town, village, or farm that didn’t contain something that wouldn’t run properly or run at all. A tractor, a pumping engine at a mine, a doctor’s Vauxhall …

  “Is it worth ten shillings to you to make it go?”

  A journeyman. Journeying. Free as a tinker. He slept under the stars if need be, but his merry good-looks rarely went unnoticed if evening found him in a town. The number of women he had slept with from Hereford to Anglesey was beyond recall. He got rid of his bicycle that first winter on the road, purchased a secondhand motorbike, and worked his way along the Mersey and up through Manchester, Bradford, and Leeds. A Sheffield millionaire hired him as chauffeur and mechanic. He had taken the job partly to spend the winter in a warm house eating decent food for a change, but mainly because it gave him the chance to delve into the mysteries of the Rolls-Royce motorcar—the only type of motorcar he had never worked on.

  A fine job, but he left it after a year and made his way to London, driven by a restlessness he could not explain. A chauffeur-mechanic had no trouble finding employment. He could pick and choose. In the spring of 1913 he entered the employ of the Earl of Stanmore.