A Future Arrived

by Phillip Rock

  “All the things you did in Iraq eight years ago.”

  “Quite so, but on a larger scale and with official sanction this time. It was a stroke of luck getting this assignment … although I sense Jacob’s fine hand somewhere along the line.”

  “Not taking the girls, I hope?”

  “Lord, no … not now. I hope the turmoil will quiet down, but not before Gandhi is released I’m afraid. Well, we shall see. Hate like hell to leave them behind, but Winnie can always fly back and visit them. Thanks to Imperial Airways it’s not the far side of the world any longer, is it? Only seven days to Karachi. You could even fly out yourself. Enough happening to satisfy your pen I should think.”

  “More than enough.” He swirled the whisky in his glass as he would a fine brandy. “I hope they don’t waste your talents in guarding salt works and breaking strikes.”

  Fenton grimaced. “I shall try to divorce myself as much as possible from the problems of the raj. The Punjab bureaucrats got themselves into this unholy mess after Amritsar and they can bloody well get themselves out of it without any help from me. My job is to work quietly in Quetta and help modernize the Indian army, not badger the followers of a little man in a loincloth.”

  “And if ordered to do so, Fenton?”

  He stared at Martin with his unblinking hawk’s eyes. “Ordered? Heaven forbid, old boy. But if I am, I shall run their bloody nappies off.”

  CHARLES TOOK THE latch key from a pocket of his dinner jacket and opened the front door. Tartuffe ambled in from the kitchen and sat in the parlor cleaning his paws.

  “And where is your mistress?” he called out.

  “I don’t know about his,” Marian shouted back, “but yours is in the bath.”

  She was chin deep in soapy froth, her raised knees jutting above the water like smooth white islands.

  “You look comfortable,” he said, leaning against the doorjamb. “Is that what you are, my mistress?”

  “Neither yours nor the cat’s. It was just too good a remark to pass up. Be a dear and toss me the luffa.”

  He took the fibrous sponge from its resting place across the water taps and plopped it in the water. “You’re expected for dinner, you know.”

  “I shan’t be late.” She sat up and scrubbed her back with the sponge. “Every muscle in my body screams with anguish.”

  “Mother is more than pleased. She told one and all that you did a magnificent job today.” He glanced at his watch. “We usually sit at eight—sharp.”

  “We’ll be there by half past seven.”

  It was steamy in the bathroom and he removed his jacket, hanging it on the back of the door. How beautiful she looked in the huge iron tub. Dwarfed by it. The cottage had once been owned by a farmer who had weighed as much as a heifer. The tub had been specially cast for him by a firm in Coventry. Thick, blackened metal and the slender softness of her body, soap flecked, the firm breasts draped with a residue as delicate as lace.

  He cleared his throat. “I was thinking of the packing. I’m sure Mother would be disappointed if you didn’t stay over.”

  “We already discussed it. I’m packed and my neighbor will look in on Tartuffe and keep his bowl filled. Persuasive woman, your mother. Not that I needed much persuading to spend the weekend in such a lovely house. She said she was giving me the Amalfi suite—whatever that is.”

  “Bedroom, dressing room, and bath; Italianate furnishings and décor, lovely view of the sunken gardens—and a door, normally kept bolted, leading to my rooms.”

  “I see,” she said quietly, lying back in the water. “I suppose she ran short of space and had to put me wherever she could.”

  “There are forty bedrooms … give or take.”

  “A perceptive woman, then. Or did you tell her about us?”

  “Only in the most general way.” He moved a wicker stool and sat beside the tub, resting his folded arms on the hard, damp sides. “I wanted her to know that it was pointless to keep inviting the vicar’s niece for Sunday tea in expectation of my seeing a great light one afternoon. I told her that I have become fond of someone.”

  “Fond. Romeo could hardly have said it better.”

  He touched the warm, soapy smoothness of her skin. “I did not tell her that I wish to spend every remaining moment of my life with this person. That I want, terribly, to—”

  She sat up, shaking her head. “No. Please don’t go on. I can’t bear the thought of being proposed to naked.”

  He bent and kissed the side of her neck. “Then hurry and dress, my love.”

  LORD STANMORE TAPPED a spoon against the wine glass for attention. “May the twins be permitted a small glass of Moselle, Winnie?”

  “I don’t think it would hurt them. Do you, Fenton?”

  “Good heavens, no. I certainly drank a wee bit on occasion when I was thirteen.”

  “Nearly fourteen, Daddy,” Victoria hissed.

  Her father laughed. “Quite so. Nearly sixteen if it comes to that!”

  Victoria, blushing, glanced over at Albert Thaxton. The boy was staring intently up the table at the earl. There would be dancing after dinner and she had made up her mind to tell him that she was fifteen. Quite impossible now unless he hadn’t heard. Damn Papa and his parade-ground voice!

  Jennifer, seated beside her, inclined her head and whispered sweetly, “That put a fly in the old ointment, didn’t it?”

  The wine was poured around the table and the earl stood up. “There was a moment a few months ago when I … but I shan’t dwell on that. I am here tonight after all, by God’s grace—”

  “Hear, hear,” Charles murmured.

  “—facing, as that poet chap wrote, dear friends and gentle hearts.”

  “How nicely put, Tony,” Hanna said.

  “Yes, well, not to place too fine a point on it, I raise my glass to everyone at this table … dear hearts, dear old friends, and dear new ones … your health.”

  Hanna raised her glass. “And, we hope, to new family.”

  “New family?” the earl said, frowning. “What on earth do you mean, my dear?”

  Charles glanced at Marian and then smiled at his mother. “I’ll answer for you, if I may.”

  “I would be honored.”

  Charles, holding Marian tightly by the hand, stood up. “I asked Mrs. Halliday to be my wife. I’m happy to say she accepted.”

  ALBERT, WHO SEEMED to know more about wireless than anyone else in the house, managed to fine tune the big set and pick up Radio Paris broadcasting the music of Paul Whiteman’s band from the Lido.

  “How terribly clever you are,” Victoria said. “Is it really coming from Paris?”

  “Transmitting from the Eiffel Tower. Super clarity.”

  “Oh, yes, marvelous.” She waited expectantly. “That’s a Gershwin song … from Lady Be Good. Very easy to dance to.”

  “Is it?”

  “Don’t they teach you how to dance at school?”

  “The waltz … with broomsticks.”

  “Broomsticks?”

  “Yes, as our partners … one-two-three-glide.”

  “I can teach you the foxtrot.” She held out her arms. It was unladylike to ask a boy to dance, but she felt reckless, sensing Jennifer’s eyes on her from across the ballroom. “Care to give it a whirl?”

  “All right,” he said.

  VICTORIA’S ECSTASY COULD not be contained. She almost swooned across her side of the bed, emitting a long, passionate sigh. “Have you ever known such a night, Jenny?”

  Jennifer only grunted, turning her back on her sister, and pulled the blanket around her shoulders. “Go to sleep.”

  “Impossible! I will never sleep again.” She switched off the bedside lamp and luxuriated in the moonlight flooding the room. “I think Marian Halliday is so beautiful … and Charles is such a handsome, distinguished man. He could have been our father, do you realize that?”

  “Oh, do shut up.”

  “But he wasn’t in love with Mama nor she with
him. It was Grandmama who wished them to marry … join the two houses … the Suttons and the Grevilles … so medieval, don’t you think? But true love triumphed over all.”

  Jennifer made a retching sound and drew the blanket over her head.

  “You have no romance in your soul, Jenny. You’ll be an old maid, withered and dried like Miss Stackpoole the postmistress at Lulworth … the one with the sharp chin and no breasts at all. You’ll see. And they taught him to dance with a broomstick! Can you imagine it? And he held me so stiffly with Daddy watching us, but I know he wanted to foxtrot out to the terrace and crush me in his—”

  Jennifer rose from under the covers and in one swift, exasperated movement brought her pillow firmly down on her twin’s head.

  THERE WAS A light under Albert’s door as Martin came down the corridor toward his own room. He opened the door and stepped inside. The boy was sitting in bed writing in his notebook.

  “Putting the day down on paper?”

  “Just for practice, actually.”

  “Don’t stop on my account.”

  “Oh, no, sir. I’m finished.”

  “Enjoy yourself today?”

  “Oh, indeed, sir … a super time. Lord Stanmore gave me a tour … rather like being in a museum. Did you know they have paintings by Constable, Reynolds, and Van Dyck? Crikey! And all those silver cups and things for riding. A very nice man, Lord Stanmore.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “And I rather liked the brigadier. Quite different from what I imagined a military chap to be. Smashing daughters, by the way … but odd about twins. So identical in looks and so opposite in personality. Victoria is … oh, warm and friendly, while the other … well, I don’t think she likes me at all.”

  “Girls often go through a stage of not liking boys.”

  “They’re usually over that by fifteen, aren’t they, sir?”

  Martin drew slowly on his cigar. “Fifteen?”

  “Nearly fifteen, Victoria said.”

  “Ah, how time flies.”

  THE DOOR LEADING to the Amalfi suite was unbolted. Charles tapped lightly and stepped inside. Both the sitting room and bedroom were in darkness, but he could see Marian in the moonlight seated on a chaise longue facing open windows. She was still wearing her dinner dress.

  “Woolgathering?” he said as he bent to kiss her forehead.

  “A bit.” She took hold of his hand and drew him down beside her. “I had a long talk with your mother. Just left her rooms as a matter of fact. An honest and candid woman.”

  “Yankee directness.”

  “I admire that. I grew up calling a spade a spade.”

  “And what did you discuss?”

  “You … us. Your happiness as her main consideration. She feels I worked a miracle on you and is grateful for that. She also made it clear that the divorced wife of an actor would not have received her blessing, let alone your father’s, before the war.”

  “No. But then a great many things were different before the war … if one can remember such a misty past.”

  “As she pointed out, I will no doubt be Countess of Stanmore one day, so she talked of practical matters … presentation at court being one. The approach, she said, would have to be handled with the utmost discretion.”

  “Yes. Our beloved monarchs view divorce with incomprehension.”

  “She believes she can manage it. Is she really a cousin of the queen?”

  “Second or third cousin … through the German branch of the Rilkes … the von Rilkes of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. When Mother has the will she will always find a way. Does the thought disturb you?”

  “A little. So does the thought of being mistress of this house. I hope your parents live to be a hundred.”

  He put his arms around her and hugged her close. “But you’re not marrying this house. You’re marrying a country schoolmaster. That thought would disturb most women these days.”

  “Not when you’re the schoolmaster. I love you very much, Charles.”

  “And I love you. Rather a comforting coincidence.”

  She rested her head against his shoulder and watched the slender branch of a plane tree, the leaves silver under the moon, move gently against the window. From somewhere in the house came the melodic chiming of eleven. “I shall remember this day … always.”

  COLIN MACKENDRIC ROSS heard the sound of bells through the depths of his dream. He was with Elmer and some other boy. The other boy was lagging far behind and he kept yelling at him to hurry up, that there were hobos down in a jungle beside the railroad tracks … hairy, ragged men boiling coffee in tin cans, waiting for the northbound freights. And he was riding Gunboat up the trail through the yuccas toward Soledad peak and on the heights he could see the ocean forever and the U.S.S. Saratoga steaming out past Point Loma and the boy he could not place was running up the trail behind him … shouting, waving his arms … and the bells of the old mission were ringing … ringing … ringing …

  DEREK, UNCOMFORTABLE AND hot in his clothes under the blanket, heard the tall-case clock in the downstairs hall chime eleven. He got out of bed and fumbled with his shoes in the darkness. There was only one other boy in his dorm, a fellow named Winslow whose father had a job in Kenya and left him in the school year round. There were only eighteen boys and girls in the school now—and one master, Mr. Wallis … not counting the headmaster. Matron had gone on holiday and Mrs. Mahon had assumed that function, but she slept like a log. He could go down the stairs and out the front door—but what if it were locked? He sat on the bed and laced his shoes. Of course it would be locked, he reasoned. Bound to be … as well as all the other doors. He could wake Winslow and ask him to help, but he was sleeping soundly, snoring gently through open mouth, a shaft of moonlight falling across his face. He walked to the window and looked down. There was a flagstone courtyard below. An awful long way and a terribly hard surface at the bottom. But there were any number of windows on the ground floor. He slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand at his stupidity.

  His shoes creaked as he tiptoed down the hall toward the main stairs. He was so intent on being silent that as he crossed the corridor leading to the girls’ dormitory wing he tripped over a carpet runner and went sprawling on his face with a loud grunt of surprise and pain.

  A door opened down the passage and the slender beam of a flashlight wavered over him.

  “Fat Chap!” Valerie’s voice. “Are you running away?”

  “Don’t be daft,” he muttered, sitting up and rubbing his knee. “And turn off that ruddy light, can’t you.”

  She padded down the corridor in bare feet and squatted beside him, legs tucked under her long, white cotton nightdress. “If you’re not running away, what are you doing then?”

  “Meeting the Yank, if you must know.”

  “Where?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Oh, do tell me,” she whispered excitedly. “Don’t be a beast.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll scream the place down if you don’t. Really I will. I’ll say I thought you were a burglar.”

  He knew she would. It was just like the Pest. “All right. I’m meeting him at the stables at midnight … the stables at the Pryory.”

  She clutched his arm feverishly. “Oh, let me come, Fat Chap … let me come.”

  “No. It … it’s too dangerous for girls.”

  She stood up and turned toward her room. “I’ll just get my gym shoes.”

  The moment she was gone he scrambled to his feet and bolted down the stairs, across the main hall, and along a corridor to the classroom where Mrs. Halliday taught art. The windows there were wide and opened onto a tree-shaded stretch of ground that led to the upper meadows of Leith Common. He was through the window in a flash and running hard for the meadows. As he climbed a low stone wall he could hear a soft patter of footsteps coming up behind him.

  “Wait for me, Fat Chap! Wait for me!”

  He tried to ignore her and to think of wa
ys to explain her presence to the Yank. And to top everything off she looked silly in gym shoes and nightdress. He felt mortified.

  “Are you going to look at the horses for the pony rides?” she asked as she trudged along beside him across the meadow. “Are you? I love horses. I had my own once … I named her Angelica. I loved her dearly. That was when I lived with my father in Devon. He doesn’t live there any longer … he lives in London and goes to New York all the time. Mother lives in Paris … or Monte Carlo … places like that. Father called her a tramp.”

  Derek stopped walking long enough to glare at her. “Must you keep talking? You’ll give the game away.”

  “What game?” She went wide eyed. “Are you going to cop a horse? Sneak it from the stables?”

  “Maybe.” He looked away from her. “It’s the Yank’s idea. I … I’m going to ride it.”

  “Do you know how?”

  “There’s nothing to it.”

  “Grab a saddle and bridle, too?”

  “I … suppose so.”

  “It’s jolly hard to ride without a saddle, but I’ve done it lots of times on Angelica—but she was gentle and she loved me so.”

  “Hush,” he said.

  They had reached a long line of fence, the white-painted rails curving off across the meadow, enclosing pasture land. There were small signs at intervals—DO NOT TRESPASS. It was bright as day with the full moon and a cloudless sky. Going on at a crouch, they followed the fence toward the long, low outline of the stables, half hidden by elms. From far across the common came the sound of midnight church bells.

  There was no sign of the Yank. Derek leaned back against a tree while Valerie sat on the ground. A dog barked fretfully and then another. A horse nickered in one of the stalls. Half a dozen ponies stirred in an open pen.

  “Which one are you going to take?” Valerie whispered.

  “I don’t know.” They looked large to him in the dappled shadows, even menacing with the moonlight glinting from their eyes. There was an empty feeling in his stomach and his legs felt weak. He thought of his bed … of Winslow’s placid snores. The distant church clock struck the half hour. The gravel path leading from the stables to the great, dark house lay deserted. “He’s not coming.”