Circles of Time

by Phillip Rock

  “Tomorrow? I’m at loose ends. We could make a sort of day of it. Go by the field so Colin can watch the plane take off, and then drive up to Dorking and have lunch at Burford Bridge.”

  “That sounds wonderful. I’ll have cook fix up a hamper. Colin loves picnics.”

  He cleared his throat. “How—I mean to say—”

  “We could come to your place about ten o’clock and go on from there in your car. It would be—easier that way.”

  “Yes—very much easier. Tomorrow, then.”

  “Yes. Tomorrow.”

  She hung up. Her heart was thumping and she could do nothing for a moment but stare at the black instrument as though in disbelief that she had actually been speaking into it—to Jamie Ross of all people.

  HE HAD A good face—honest, open, easy to smile and laugh. The freckles and sandy hair gave him a boyish look. And he had a boy’s enthusiasm for life, chatting away as he drove the car, holding Colin spellbound with stories about seaplanes, about kite-flying from the cliffs at a place called La Jolla, about swimming in the ocean at Christmastime, fiestas in Mexico.... She looked away from him and gazed at the woods and meadows beyond Dorking, not really seeing anything. He was in no way similar to Robin Mackendric. Robbie had been outwardly grave and taciturn. Only she—and his patients—had known the warmth and compassion beneath the shell. And yet he reminded her strongly of Robbie. She felt at ease with him. She felt—happy.

  They found a stand of horse-chestnut trees near the top of Box Hill—a long, hard climb up from the road. She rested, spreading a plaid blanket on the grass, while Colin and Jamie Ross searched for the spiny green pods which, when opened, revealed large shiny seeds.

  “Lord,” Ross said, flopping onto the grass near her, “that lad could wear a stevedore down to his knees.”

  “Yes,” she said, sitting up and undoing the straps on the hamper. “And he can eat like one, too.”

  “So can I, if it comes to that.” He watched her remove a cold roast chicken, hard-boiled eggs, celery, cheeses, and a bottle of cider. “The Grevilles always were good providers.”

  She gave him a thoughtful look. “Do I make you think of those days, Jamie—of servants’ hall?”

  He frowned and plucked at a piece of grass. “I’m not unaware of having been—your man Ross … but I’m not uncomfortable with you, if that’s what you mean. I’m not the same bloke, am I? Or, anyway, I keep telling myself I’m not. But if I hadn’t been His Lordship’s chauffeur, I wouldn’t have thought twice about driving to the Pryory this morning and picking up you and Colin.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “But I don’t look at you and say, ‘My God, I’m having a picnic in the woods with Lady Alexandra.’ I just see you as—well, as a beautiful and charming woman who’s easy to be with.”

  “Thank you, Jamie. That was a nice thing to say.”

  Colin saw the food and hurried over, his pockets filled with horse-chestnut seeds. After eating, he wanted to go for a walk, or a roll down the hill, or to climb a tree if Jamie would lift him up to the branches. But his frenetic burst of energy dissipated rapidly and he rolled onto his stomach on the blanket and fell instantly asleep. Ross covered him with his sweater.

  “Out like a light.”

  “He likes you, Jamie. So do I.”

  He stared down at the boy for a moment and then looked at her. There was no mistaking what he saw in her eyes. As he took her in his arms—the softness of her body against him, her lips against his own—his thoughts whirled off in all directions. It wasn’t possible—it wasn’t right—and yet, in this world—topsy-turvy—upside down—everything changing, spinning toward unthought-of horizons—could he? Could she? And then he gave up thinking altogether, lost in the fever of their embrace.

  IX

  JACOB GOLDEN BOUGHT a copy of the Daily Post outside Victoria Station and scanned through it as his taxi crawled through the West End traffic toward Soho. He found what he was looking for on page six, the editorial page, and was wryly amused by what he read there.

  OUR VIEW

  It is the opinion of the Daily Post that the libel action being brought by Major General Sir. B. D. Sparrowfield against Mr. M. Rilke, which will be heard before Mr. Justice Larch this coming Friday, 21st April, is a most unwelcome undertaking at this time. We fail to see what possible benefit the plaintiff can derive from such a suit. It will surely bring into sharp question the decisions the general and his staff made during an abortive attack against the German lines at Thiepval one fateful day in August 1916—a place and time in history that, we firmly believe, the overwhelming majority of Englishmen would as soon forget....

  Jacob smiled, folded the newspaper into a tight square, and slipped it into the pocket of his coat. He turned his head to look out of the window at Piccadilly.

  “Hypocrites,” he murmured.

  He was thirty-two and looked much younger, a tall, thin, dark-haired man with a face of almost feminine delicacy. The female quality was enhanced by large, soft brown eyes, a complexion of olive-hued ivory, and his curly hair. The mouth saved him from prettiness. A taut slash, the lips usually curled in mockery.

  He went up the stairs to his flat lugging a heavy leather suitcase. He smiled when he went inside and looked around. Martin’s presence in the place was obvious by the neatness. After dumping his suitcase in his bedroom, he opened a cold bottle of champagne and stretched out on the parlor sofa. He was still there, drinking champagne, smoking cigarettes, and reading back issues of The Times, when Martin came home. Martin eyed the sea of tossed away newspapers littering the floor.

  “Well, I can tell you’re back.”

  Jacob raised himself and grinned. “Is that all the welcome I get, old boy? Sarcastic chastisement?”

  “Of course not,” Martin said wearily. “It’s damn good to see you. Any champagne left?”

  “Bottles and bottles. Do join.”

  Jacob Golden had few friends—his choice. People, he had once said to Martin, are too pathetic to be taken seriously and far too devious to be befriended. His caustic aphorisms tended to infuriate and had done so since he was a boy. His father had unwittingly placed him in a renowned and ancient preparatory school whose boys had dismissed Jacob instantly as “that thin Jew.” A school of such stupefying snobbery and random cruelty that his only defense against it had been his withering tongue. He would have been in for severe physical reprisals by enraged peers if an upper-form boy, captain of his house and the school eleven, had not come to his defense and made it known that Jacob was to be left alone. Fenton Wood-Lacy had not so much befriended Jacob as he had placed him under the wings of his protection, the way he might have protected a wet and starving cat from mindless cruelty. That singular act had made Fenton a friend for life—an honor that, at times, Fenton could gladly have done without. Jacob’s friendship with Martin was less easily explained. Their very oppositeness had something to do with it—light and shadow, mirth and grief, faith and despair. Martin viewed mankind with compassion, tolerance, and hope. Jacob viewed its dark underside and saw no hope for it at all.

  “I was beginning to think you had departed forever,” Martin said as he came back into the room unwinding the wire around a bottle’s cork. “You could have dropped me a line from time to time.”

  “I could have, yes, but I knew you were staying abreast of my wanderings. I kept running into your lads in the most god-forsaken places.”

  “I know,” Martin said dryly. “They kept mailing in your IOU’s.”

  “Well, I’m sure you understand, dear chap. When one works for the League of Nations, one does so at considerable financial sacrifice. I was sent out to report on world hunger, not to become a part of it. Rest assured I shall pay back every penny.”

  The cork made a satisfactory pop. “All debts squared—by me. Call it rent. I love this dump.”

  “I know you do, dear old fellow. That’s why I had no qualms about tapping your grossly overpaid correspondents for a fiver or two.�
��

  “How was the trip?”

  “Interesting.” He sat up and held out his empty glass for a refill. “Full of insoluble problems—and sobering revelations. I stayed out longer than I had to. Thrace … Bulgaria … followed the Black Sea into the Ukraine and on as far as the Don. The land of the Fisher King and Chapels Perilous—waste and barren. Even the crows eat stones.” He took a sip of champagne. “I killed a man in the Ukraine, Martin. I thought you might like to know.”

  Martin sat in a chair facing the sofa and placed the bottle on the floor. “If you want to tell me.”

  “It’s ironic, actually,” Jacob said. “I mean, after all, I did go to prison for two years as a conscientious objector. Felt rather proud of my pacificism—almost smug, in fact. A Red Army commissar took a fancy to me—tall, strapping woman named Lyubov—but that’s another story. Anyway, she sent two troopers with me as an escort when I left Berdichev for Kiev. We were jumped on the second day by a party of roving Whites. I had no arms and one of my Red trooper friends tossed me a pistol—a big heavy Mauser with a wood handle. Needed both hands to hold the damn thing. These bandits, or whatever they were, must have been half drunk, because they rode straight toward us swinging sabers above their heads. I rested the Mauser on my horse’s neck and fired at a man with a yellow beard. Caught him flush and he must have been dead before he fell out of the saddle. The Reds disposed of two more, and the others scattered. The one I hit lay on his back, a tiny dark hole in his forehead—like a cigarette burn in a blanket. So much for ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”

  “It was him or you.”

  “That’s what the judge at my conscientious-objector hearing asked me, something about what I’d do if a ruddy big German was coming at me with a bayonet—him or you? Told him I’d reason with the bloke. Got a laugh from the gallery. Glib and witty Jacob Golden.” He took a drink of champagne. “I’ve been somewhat of a fraud most of my life, Martin. The fact is, I killed him and felt damn good that he was dead and I wasn’t dangling from the end of his sword.”

  “A fairly normal reaction, I would say.”

  “I suppose it is, but I’ve always taken the not-so-normal approach to things, haven’t I? Always marched to a different drummer just for the sake of being out of step with others. It was a revelation, Martin.”

  “That you’re just an ordinary man after all? Don’t let it bother you. We are all ordinary men. You’re alive. That’s all that counts.”

  “Yes, I’m alive.” He lit a cigarette. “The point now is, where do I go from here? I’m considered something of a hero in pacifist circles. I don’t quite see how I can still march in those ranks after bumping off people like some later-day Billy the Kid.”

  “If you’d turned the other cheek, Jacob, that cossack would have sliced it right off your face. Even the most ardent pacifist would understand that.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. Still, it does make one think a bit. How easy it is to justify murder if one’s own skin is in jeopardy. It’s made me view war in a rather different light. And speaking of war, are you as amused as I am by the Post’s pious turnabout?”

  “Not particularly. They sniff a trend. After all, they didn’t achieve the largest circulation in the world by swimming against the tide.”

  “Did you know they were going to jump onto your side?”

  “No. It was a complete surprise. But I’m grateful for it.”

  “I knew. The Guv’nor told me. He telephoned me in Geneva last week.”

  “Oh? The two of you are talking again, I take it.”

  “If one conversation can be considered talking. He wants to see me about something important. Wouldn’t say what it was.”

  “Is that why you came back?”

  “Partly. I also came back because I quit my job with the League. Need a good reporter who speaks five languages and works cheap?”

  “Anytime.”

  “Thanks, old chap, but I wouldn’t allow you to burden yourself. No, I think I’ll just knock about for a bit and try to get my jangled senses back in tune.”

  “Did you ever get my letter about Charles, by the way?”

  “Yes. It was forwarded on to me in Bucharest. Made me jolly glad, I can tell you. The Guv’nor brought that up, too. Told me he found a picture in the morgue. Me the day I was arrested—astride the barrel of that howitzer in Trafalgar Square, tossing those pamphlets of Charlie’s court-martial hearing into the crowd. I don’t imagine anyone bothered to read a copy. Not the sort of stuff people were interested in, was it? I suppose they are now, though. Your book was selling like mad in Paris.”

  “Here as well.”

  Jacob smiled wryly and drained his glass. “And the jolly old Daily Post is aware of it, too. I think they want to ride on the bandwagon.” He looked at his watch. “Now’s as good a time as any to see the Guv’nor. I wish you’d come with me. I’m substantially fortified with bubbly, but not quite up to facing the old boy alone.”

  THE Daily Post building loomed over Fleet Street, its myriad glass windows and thin, fluted stone columns giving it the appearance of some vast Victorian railway station. Broad stone steps flanked by two cast-iron lions led to cathedral-size doors of gray-green bronze. Fleet Street wags called the place “The Golden temple.” And it was. Harry Golden’s monument to his journalism. Harry Golden—the great Lord Crewe.

  “I’m just a Hebrew lad from Whitechapel who made his way in the world” was how Lord Crewe had described himself once to a magazine writer. There was no one who would dispute that claim, although the impression of a barefoot lad roaming the streets of the East End was far from the truth. Only the highly profitable family printing business had been in Whitechapel. Young Harry had grown up in a pleasant suburban house in Hampstead. But he had definitely made his way in the world, taking over, in 1885 at the age of thirty, a near-moribund newspaper called the London and Provinces Daily Post and Times Register, shortening its name and turning it by 1900 into the largest daily paper in England. He had done it by copying the style of journalism as practiced so successfully in America by Pulitzer and Hearst. He had pleased the masses with lurid stories of murders and love nests and had delighted the Tories by bolstering their vision of imperialism and empire. His jingoistic editorial policy regarding the rebuilding of the Royal Navy, the take-over of the Sudan, and outrage at the Boers had earned him a peerage. As a yachtsman of unsurpassed skill, Lord Crewe always knew which way the wind was blowing.

  There was no day or night in the Daily Post building. Lights burned constantly and the giant presses in the cavernous basement rumbled on unceasingly. A uniformed page boy met Jacob and Martin in the foyer and escorted them to the private elevator that whisked them to the building’s top floor.

  “Brings back a few memories,” Jacob said as they walked down a marble corridor toward the private suite of Lord Crewe—known within the building simply as “the Guv’nor.”

  “Yes,” Martin said quietly.

  It did indeed. Nineteen fourteen. Jacob had been a reporter on the paper, a specialist on the Byzantine complexities of Balkan politics. Jacob had liked some of Martin’s humorous travel sketches of England and had persuaded his father to give Martin a job as a feature writer. A year later Martin had been sent to Gallipoli as a war correspondent, but his association with the paper had ended when he had returned to London from the Middle East. He had been angered by the fact that none of his pieces criticizing the Dardanelles campaign had been printed. He had not known then to what extent the press barons of both England and America would subdue the grim truths of war. As he walked down the corridor now, past Lord Crewe’s vast collection of Italian Renaissance paintings, he could almost hear the Guv’nor’s booming sailor’s voice telling him that England’s faith in its military leaders and the conduct of the war must not be shaken. “It’s victory, Rilke, and only victory that concerns this newspaper.” Lord Crewe moving briskly with the wind—but now the winds had changed.

  “He will see you now.” Lord C
rewe’s private secretary reentered the anteroom. He was a thin, stoop-shouldered man who looked and spoke like an Oxford don—and had been, until lured away by a salary far above what he had received at Balliol College.

  Lord Crewe sat in a Biedermeier chair behind a long oak dining table that he used as a desk. He was a burly, barrel-chested man with a back as straight as a capstan bar—as different from his son as day from night.

  “Hello, Jacob. Rilke—glad you came along, too.”

  “It’s good to see you again, Guv’nor,” Martin said as they approached the desk. “Been a long time.”

  “A coon’s age, as they say in America. But I follow your career.”

  “So I notice—by today’s editorial.”

  “Oh, that. I’m sure it surprised you, but a successful newspaper must swim with the stream. The war could not be told in nineteen sixteen, but it can be told now. We’re planning a three-week series of articles, including many of your dispatches for us that were turned down by the censors—the army censors and my censors. We believe the time is right and we expect to create some furor.”

  “Furor sells papers,” Jacob said quietly.

  His father fixed him with an iron glance. “It does indeed. But then, that’s what I’m in business for.” He looked back at Martin. “We come out with the first part of the series on Wednesday. It should do much to influence Sir Edmund Larch’s thinking when he starts composing his instructions to the jury—if indeed he decides to address a jury at all.”

  “I won’t thank you, Guv’nor,” Martin said. “You know me better than that. But I’m gratified by your change in policy, whatever your reason.”

  Lord Crewe laughed softly. “By God, Rilke, if I wanted the Daily Post to be a truly decent and upstanding newspaper, I’d turn it over to you. It would go bankrupt in a year, but what a year it would be! I regret you never went sailing with me. I am, as they say on blue water, an honest man at the helm. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must have a few words with my son in private. You can wait in the side room. There’s some damn fine whiskey in the cabinet. Pour from the yellow jug. An exceptional malt that Harry Lauder sent me from a distillery in Strathbraan.”