Circles of Time

by Phillip Rock

  Police whistles shrilled. Two mounted policemen spurred their horses forward. The ordered ranks of the peace march began to dissolve into confused and frightened groups of screaming women and small, angry knots of men. Banners and signs littered the pathway. William planted his feet and threw punches until he saw Jacob roll free and get up on one knee. There was blood coming from his nose but he looked all right and Winifred had run up and was kneeling in front of him, pressing a handkerchief to his face.

  William turned and slammed his fist into the jaw of one Fascist and kicked at another—but they were scattering, running off across the park. The men lumbering toward him now were bobbies—half a dozen or more, blowing whistles, wielding truncheons. He thought of the grim-faced inspector at Chancery Lane police station … the cold cells with their iron doors. His knee felt on fire after being kicked and he hobbled toward a milling group of women.

  “Stop that man!”

  Several of the women clapped as he reached them. They formed a wall around him and raised a tattered banner as though to shield him from view with it. NO MORE WAR INTERNATIONAL—SUSSEX CHAPTER.

  “That man! Hold that man!”

  “Why don’t you go after those bullies!” a woman screamed at the police.

  A girl tugged frantically at William’s sleeve. “Duck down, for heaven’s sake! You’re much too tall!”

  He bent down to the level of the girl. She was red-haired and slender and wore a blue mackintosh and a black beret. She slipped quickly out of the mackintosh and draped it over William’s shoulders like a shawl.

  “Come with me,” she said. “Quickly!”

  The marchers were re-forming with some confusion. The girl, holding William by the hand, ducked through the milling crowd and then back along the line of march toward Hyde Park Corner.

  “The police didn’t see us,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. “Keep walking slowly, and bent like that. You’ll look like an old man from the back.”

  He certainly felt like one. His knee ached, and assorted other places on his body and face were starting to smart and throb. He’d punched quite a few men, but quite a few had punched him.

  “Be careful,” she whispered. “Coppers.” She tugged at his hand. “Quickly—down here.”

  They descended the steps of the Hyde Park Corner tube station. The girl placed some coins on the ticket counter and they went deeper, down to the trains and onto one of them.

  They sat facing each other. She smiled happily as the train began to move. “There! We made it. Sanctuary!”

  “Where are we going?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t know London too well. It doesn’t matter. The only important thing is that you’re safe. You were magnificent! The way you bored into them—totally without fear. I suppose that comes from long experience—crossing frontiers … border guards … the cordon sanitaire.”

  He could only stare at her. She had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. The palest of green.

  “Where are you from?” he asked.

  She straightened her beret, which had tipped askew. “Tunbridge Wells.”

  “And what do you do in Tunbridge Wells?”

  “Do?” She shrugged. “Study history and economics at Southborough College. Live with my parents, but surely—”

  “And what does your father do?”

  “Father? He’s in the church. A bishop, actually. But let’s not talk about me. I’m frightfully dull. I want to know about you. You must have had all sorts of thrilling adventures. Have you crossed swords with the Fascisti in Italy?”

  “Italy? No—not in Italy.” He stared at her for a long time and then leaned toward her. “Tell me something,” he asked earnestly. “Do you like—horses?”

  “YOU MUST LIE down,” Winifred said. “I’ll ring for a doctor.”

  “No, I’m fine,” Jacob said. Keeping his head tilted back, the handkerchief—now crimson—pressed to his nose, he stretched out on the sofa. “Nothing broken. I can tell.”

  “You took a frightful beating. Oh, those rotters!”

  “You can’t blame them, Winnie. They were only doing their job.”

  “Job!”

  “Jew-bashing. An ancient if not exactly honorable profession.”

  “You’re making a joke of it,” she said, an edge to her voice.

  “No, I’m not. I assure you I’m not. You might go in the kitchen and chip off some ice—and bring a bottle of bubbly while you’re at it. The nineteen thirteen Clicquot will do.”

  “I hope Martin was all right,” she said as she came back into the room with the ice wrapped in a towel. “I didn’t see him.”

  “He was at the head of the parade. Quite safe and sound. He’ll have a few choice words to write about that.”

  Winifred knelt beside the sofa and replaced the bloody handkerchief with the cold towel. “That should stop the bleeding.”

  “You’re a good woman, Winnie.”

  “Forgoing modesty, I quite agree.”

  “Even if you did forget the champagne.”

  “You can have a drink later. Alcohol stops the blood from clotting.”

  He sat up, pressing the towel to his nose. “I think it’s stopped.” He removed the towel tentatively. “Yes. The tap is off.”

  “Keep your head back—just in case it isn’t.”

  He smiled at her, reached out and touched her hair. “It’s been quite a day for you, hasn’t it, Winnie?”

  “A bit hectic.”

  “I find the paradox amusing. The colonel’s lady marching in a peace parade.”

  She eyed him gravely. “I told Fenton I was a pacifist before he married me. It didn’t matter to him.”

  “God, no. It wouldn’t have mattered to old Fenton if you’d been a cannibal.”

  She stood up. “I’ll get the champagne. I could stand a drink myself.”

  “Is there anything troubling you, Winnie?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m a perceptive sort of bloke. I feel—vibrations.”

  She put a hand to her throat and toyed with the top button of her blouse. “Fenton’s been gone for ten months now. They can keep him there for years, can’t they? They might grant him some leave in another year—and then again, they might not. Their whole point is to drive him out of the army, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid it is.”

  “And he’ll never break. He’ll never give in.”

  “I can’t see him doing it, no.”

  “I love him very much, but I’m human—just as Fenton is human. Did he tell you that he had an affair when he was stationed in Ireland?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact. It didn’t mean anything, though.”

  “Not to him, perhaps. It meant a great deal to the girl. She sent him letters, which I inadvertently opened. It was quite a shock. But I couldn’t really blame him. He must have been horribly lonely in Shannon. It gave him—comfort. For a little while.”

  “I suppose it did.”

  “It took me some time to get over it, but I can understand now.”

  “You’re a woman of great compassion—and tolerance.”

  She gave him a quizzical look. “I detect the barest shadow of mockery in your tone.”

  “That’s hardly surprising.” He stood up with a groan and dropped the icy towel on the carpet. “I view almost everything with a degree of amusement—bitter amusement most of the time. Perhaps it’s because I’m quicker than most people. I grasp the heart of things while others are still fumbling around the edges.”

  He was standing very close to her and she could feel her breath catch. She put her hand to her throat again, fingers playing with the blouse button.

  He smiled, almost sadly. “You want very much to undo that button, don’t you, Winnie? Almost as much as I want you to undo it. But something blocks the act. That terrible word ‘morality.’ Your husband—my oldest friend. And if I asked you to go to bed with me, would the sky collapse on our heads? Would we burn eter
nally in hell? Or would we just, as dear friends, comfort one another—for a little while?”

  HE STROKED HER breasts and then kissed her nipples—a kiss for each. When he rested his cheek against hers, he could taste the salt of tears.

  “Not regret, I hope?”

  She shook her head and raised herself on one elbow. A little sun still filtered into the bedroom, falling across her nakedness like a pale spotlight.

  “No, Jacob. I feel—very happy. You’re a wonderful lover.”

  “It’s my female qualities, I imagine. I understand women.”

  “Yes, you do. Do you understand why I’m crying?”

  “Of course. You miss Fenton more than ever. Being held … being loved …” He sat up and turned to her, easing her down on her back. “I love you, Winnie. God help me, but I do. I have a regret. I know that when you leave this bed you’ll never come back to it. It doesn’t matter. I had you for a fraction of time. ’Twill suffice. And I give you a promise. I’ll get that thickheaded colonel back to you. I don’t know how just yet—it’ll take some thought—but I’ll do it, Winnie. I swear on your loveliness, I’ll do it.”

  X

  THERE WERE TIMES when he was almost overwhelmed by the sadness of memory. He felt it most keenly at Abingdon Pryory, when walking through Leith Woods or while crossing the meadows near Burgate House. The feeling of loss would fade in time, he was certain of that. All wounds healed eventually. It was a question of facing up to the reality of time. It was the spring of 1922, not the happy springs of 1913 or 1914. Those years were gone. Utterly past—and so many things with them.

  “Bad Scoot! … Bad, bad Scoot! …”

  He smiled down at Colin who was scolding one of the terriers which had run back after a fruitless pursuit of rabbits.

  “You can’t blame him, Colin. He’s just doing what he likes to do best.”

  “No, Uncle Charles … no … bad Scoot!”

  Charles sat down in the grass with his back against a fence post and took out his pipe and tobacco pouch. He patted the grass beside him. “Come, sit down. I think I have a toffee in my pocket somewhere.” He fished it out and handed it to the little boy. “Can you take the paper off? It’s quite sticky.”

  “Yes,” Colin muttered. He flopped down beside his uncle and began the studious task of unwrapping the square of toffee.

  Charles lit his pipe and gazed off across the meadow toward the Gothic spires and dark limestone facade of Burgate House. Crows wheeled and cawed above the chimneys or stalked the derelict gardens. His sharpest pangs of memory came from looking at that empty house, and he knew that he would not be truly whole until he had reconciled himself to the fact that the house was indeed empty—shuttered and sealed—and that the woman who had lived there was living a quite different life now.

  “Apples,” Colin said as he chewed on the toffee. “Apples, Uncle Charles … apples.”

  It was part of the ritual of their morning walks together—the unpruned apple trees drawing Colin to the house as surely as memory drew him.

  “All right. Piggyback?”

  “Piggyback! Piggyback! …” He clambered onto Charles and locked his arms around his neck. “Giddy-up … giddy-up!”

  Being on Charles’s shoulders was the only way he could reach the apple boughs. The apples were small and green and not to be eaten, but he enjoyed plucking them from the stems and throwing them against the tree trunk or into the tall grass. On one of their walks Colin had seen the small, wild ponies that lived in the woods and meadows near Burgate Hill foraging for fallen apples under the trees. He threw the apples down for them.

  “Here, horsey! Here, horsey!” he shouted. But the ponies never came.

  “They’re very shy.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, Colin. They just are. But they’ll come after we’re gone and find the apples.”

  The sound of a car coming up the long drive startled Charles. He lifted Colin down and looked toward the house. The car came into view and then stopped in front of the house. A man and a woman got out and stood looking up at its soaring towers and spires for a few moments before slowly walking toward the front steps.

  “Hello!” Charles called out.

  The couple turned and looked at him curiously as he walked toward them out of the orchard holding Colin by the hand. They were middle-aged, the man tall and burly, the woman nearly as tall but very slender. The man held out a beefy hand as Charles reached them.

  “Good morning. Mastwick’s my name—John Mastwick—and this is my wife, Virginia.”

  “Charles Greville. And this is my nephew, Colin.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Mastwick said. He shook Charles’s hand and then pointed up at the looming house. “Bit of a monstrosity, isn’t it?”

  Charles smiled. “I’m afraid it is, yes. A mad duke built it during the reign of Queen Anne. His only son was killed in the French wars and he wanted the house to look like a cathedral—or a tomb. I’m not sure which.”

  “He succeeded on both counts, if you ask me. Still, beggars can’t be choosers. Lord Foxe has just given us the place—a ninety-nine-year lease at one pound per annum.”

  “We’re not exactly being overcharged,” Virginia Mastwick said with a thin little smile. “But, oh, Lord, it’s going to take some doing to make it livable for the children.”

  “How many children do you have?” Charles asked.

  “Twenty-eight,” she said, “but we’re expecting another twenty.” She saw the expression on his face and laughed. “We’re turning the place into a school.”

  “Moving our school here, to be more precise,” Mastwick said gloomily. “We have a wretched, crowded little place at present near Spilsby in Lincolnshire. Lord Foxe heard of our school and our plight and made us this gesture. One could hardly refuse. Still …”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” his wife said with a kind of forced cheerfulness. “A bit of paint and tidying up … We’ll manage, John.”

  “Yes, I suppose we will.”

  “Is this the first time you’ve seen it?”

  “No,” Mastwick said. “We were here yesterday afternoon with Lord Foxe’s agent. He took us through the place and tried to explain its peculiarities. First-rate plumbing—I’ll say that much.”

  “What sort of school do you have?”

  The Mastwicks exchanged glances. “It’s a different sort of school,” Mrs. Mastwick replied. “A coeducational school for—well …”

  “The type of child who doesn’t fit into a conventional school,” her husband said. “Not disturbed children so much as unhappy ones. A school without uniforms, old ties, old ideas or rote. The children have as much to say about the rules and curriculum as we do. We’ve found that when children decide on their own codes they are less likely to break them, and when they study what interests them they’re more likely to learn something. Classes are not compulsory, but after the novelty of that wears off we never have attendance problems. Children want to learn, you know. They’re naturally curious and intrigued by knowledge. They are given no grades as such—and no punishment. Ignorance, we stress, is punishment enough.”

  “It sounds fascinating,” Charles said. “It’s certainly—different.”

  “It’s a concept that intrigued us for many years. An idea, actually, that I first had when I was a boy at Marlborough and had quite forgotten about until the war. I was captured at Aubers Ridge in ’fifteen and had a few years in prison camp to think about it.”

  “My husband ran a school for fellow prisoners of war.”

  “Yes, most of them were quite uneducated, and unorthodox methods were required to teach them anything. I enlisted in the army as a private, by the way. I’d never been in the cadet corps at either Marlborough or Oxford and didn’t feel that being an old Marlburian or Oxonian automatically qualified me as a leader of men in battle. In fact, I found that most young officers who came direct to the battalion from public schools had nothing at all to qualify them for the task ex
cept an extraordinary, quite useless, and pathetic bravery. But we’re drifting far afield. I take it you live near here, Mr. Greville?”

  “Yes, just across the hill. I used to visit here often before the war.”

  “A friend of Lord Foxe?”

  “He was just plain Archie Foxe in those days. But, yes, I knew him well. I was married to his daughter.”

  “You must drop by when we’re truly settled in—although the Lord knows when that will be.” He reached down and patted Colin on the head. “And bring your young nephew as well.”

  “By all means,” Mrs. Mastwick said. “We’ll be more hospitable by then—jam tarts and tea.”

  Charles started to turn away, and then impulsively looked back at John Mastwick and said, “We were divorced. Quite a long time ago. I’d been rather badly shell-shocked, you see.”

  The schoolmaster stared at him for a long moment, searching his face. Then he nodded knowingly. “Virginia and I will be moving some of our gear in on Saturday. Drop by. We’ll have a nice long chat.”

  “I would like that.”

  “Yes,” Mastwick said gently, “I can see that you would.”

  ALEXANDRA PARKED HER little two-seater Vauxhall in a lane off High Street, puffed nervously on a cigarette, and kept glancing into the rearview mirror. When she saw his car enter the lane, she got out and waited for him.

  “Good morning,” Ross said, leaning across and opening the door for her.

  “Hello, Jamie.” She got in beside him and snuffed out her cigarette in the ashtray.

  “Where’s His Nibs?”

  “With my brother today.”

  “I’d thought we might go for a drive to the RAF field at Farnborough. He would have enjoyed that. There’s an engineer I want to see. Chap’s been experimenting with high-altitude blowers—superchargers, we call them. Sounds interesting.”

  “Must it be today?”

  “No.” He looked away from her and stared miserably ahead. “But I must see him before I—go back.”