Days Without Number

by Robert Goddard

  ‘Basil?’

  ‘Nick?’ It was Basil, his narrow, bony face peering at him from beneath the brim of the hood. ‘Trust you to be the only other poor fool game for a stroll on the Hoe in this weather.’

  ‘I got here a touch early.’

  ‘Not a much better excuse than mine.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Cooking for a guest makes Anna nervous. And a nervous Anna is a short-tempered Anna.’

  ‘I’m hardly a guest. And since when did Anna ever get nervous about anything?’

  ‘Since I moved in. She tells me I’m enough to try the patience of a saint. Which is obviously true, as I invariably rejoin. I tried the patience of several and am in a position to know that their funds of it weren’t inexhaustible.’

  ‘Shall we go and see how she’s getting on?’

  ‘There’s another twenty minutes yet before you’re due. I think we should wait until then.’

  ‘We’ll be soaked to the skin by that time.’

  ‘True. But I wasn’t thinking of waiting here.’

  The nearest pub was Basil’s recommended loitering spot. This was the Yard Arm, nestled in the lee of the towering Moat House Hotel just off the Hoe. Basil ordered a tonic water and, thinking of the drive back to Saltash, Nick did the same. The bar was half-full, gearing up slowly for Saturday night. They found a table just inside the door.

  Only when they sat down did Nick take a serious look at his by now unhooded brother. He was certainly not getting fat on a diet of idleness and whatever Anna served up in the way of meals. Like Andrew, he had grown gaunt with age, but unlike Andrew there was no greyness to his features; rather, a strange, animated flush. He had shaved his head, which made his eyes look disproportionately huge. Since he had always possessed a faintly bolt-eyed gaze, the effect on strangers, Nick suspected, would be disquieting.

  This was not altogether inappropriate, since Basil had led a generally disquieting life. More preoccupied with their Greek roots than his brothers and sisters, he had embarked on a classics degree at Oxford, living at home rather than in college, but had failed to complete the course. Visiting Greece during the second summer of his studies, he had persuaded an Orthodox monastery near Corinth to take him on as a trainee monk. The training had stretched to more than twenty years, following which he had suddenly reappeared in his relatives’ lives, beardless, unhabited and apparently bereft of his monastic vocation. He had lived at Trennor for a while, then vanished to the Scilly Islands, then returned and been taken in by Anna.

  ‘I often come in here, you know,’ he said, just as Nick took his first sip of tonic water and realized that it really would have been much better with gin. ‘I look at the other customers—the groups of lads, the pairs of boyfriends and girlfriends, the solitaries like me. I think I’m beginning to understand society. But as for joining it, well, I’m forced to conclude that I’ve left it too late.’

  ‘Do you miss Greece?’

  ‘Of course. Especially the light. But I had to leave, Nick. I was fooling myself there. And others. Here I amount to very little. But that very little is me.’

  ‘See much of Dad?’

  ‘Only under escort. To say I’m a disappointment to him would be a gross understatement.’

  ‘I don’t think he’s overly impressed with any of us.’

  ‘The record of our achievements is a thin one, it’s true. But mine is so thin as to have disintegrated. Hence I shall take a back seat when you all explain to him tomorrow why he absolutely must accept Mr Tantris’s offer.’

  ‘You don’t sound convinced that he should.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not disputing the logic of acceptance. It’s unarguable. Though I suspect Dad will argue.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘The question is: why? If this Doom Window really is hidden at Trennor, our father the celebrated archaeologist should be straining at the leash to start looking for it. But not so.’

  ‘I expect he thinks we’re trying to steamroller him.’

  ‘Which we are, of course.’

  ‘For the best of reasons.’

  ‘Really?’ Basil cocked a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Pardon me, Nick, but the overriding reason is greed, isn’t it? Andrew, Irene and Anna want the money. So do you, I presume. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘You seem to have left yourself off the list.’

  ‘Ah well, I don’t want it, you see. Wealth—even to the limited degree that appears to be on offer—wouldn’t agree with me. I’ve decided to forgo my share. You can split it between you.’

  ‘You’re not serious.’

  ‘Anna doubted I was when I informed her of my decision. It seems you doubt me too. Never mind. I know I’m in earnest. It’s quite a relief, actually, quite pleasant being disinterested. I don’t want you to worry that I’m going to be holier-than-thou about this. You can all put the proceeds to good use. And Dad will be royally pampered at Gorton Lodge. I don’t disapprove of the arrangement.’

  ‘You just don’t want to profit from it.’

  ‘It’s not that. It’s something more well, something quite pitiful, actually.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Having nothing is the only knack I’ve perfected.’ Basil shaped a grin. ‘I think I’d better hang on to it.’

  Anna’s basement flat was full of cheese and garlic fumes when Nick and Basil entered. She emerged from the kitchen, her face as shiny as her PVC Dennis the Menace apron, greeted without comment their claim to have met in the street and gave Nick a hug and a kiss before hurrying back to the stove with a parting instruction for them to open some wine.

  Anna had always been the loudest and most physically demonstrative of the siblings. She was now also, beyond dispute, the largest, her curvaceous figure having expanded well beyond buxomness. She and the rifle pull-through Basil made an odd pairing. But Anna was also the most generous member of the family, which explained why she had been willing to take in an unemployed and unemployable lapsed monk possessed of a discombobulating stare.

  Not that sharing a home with her brother involved surrendering territory to him. The lounge-diner bore no trace of his presence, dominated as it was by Anna’s exuberant taste in wall-hung rugs and zigzag-patterned armchairs. Stacks of leaflets and newsletters dedicated to her pet campaign against nuclear-submarine repairs at Devonport Dockyard were piled on the floor next to the table, as if they had just been cleared from it, making way for cutlery, glasses and a bottle of Chianti.

  Nick found the corkscrew on the mantelpiece, next to a propped-up postcard of the Sydney Opera House. He turned the card round and read the message.

  Hi, Anna. It’s hotter than your curry here, but I’m cool. Making out good. I’ll email soon. Love, Z.

  Z, as Nick knew but no stranger was likely to deduce from the wording, was Anna’s eighteen-year-old son, Zack, currently occupied in gap-year globetrotting and the same age now as Anna had been when he was born. Nick’s nephews and niece were widely scattered, no question: Zack bumming around Australia, Tom doing whatever his thing was in Edinburgh and Laura learning to play lacrosse and walk with her knees brushing together at some academy for the daughters of gentlefolk in Harrogate.

  ‘No message for his uncle, you’ll notice,’ said Basil, peering over Nick’s shoulder.

  ‘I wouldn’t have expected one.’

  ‘I meant for me. I do live here, you know.’

  ‘And I’m sure Zack’s glad of that. Must be comforting for the lad to know there’s someone here to look after his mother.’

  ‘Open the wine,’ said Basil, mock-tetchily. ‘It’s obvious you need a drink.’

  Basil was spot-on with his last observation. Nick had neither welcomed nor been able to refute his brother’s diagnosis of greed at work in the family. He did not feel greedy. He did not believe he was greedy. Yet he could not imagine out of existence the pound signs attached to Tantris’s offer. They made a difference, as no doubt they always did in Tantris’s high-rolling experience. They made the
man impossible to ignore.

  For as long as it took them to work their way through Anna’s generously portioned moussaka there was no direct discussion of the sale of Trennor and their father’s future. It was only when Basil had been dispatched to the kitchen to load the dishwasher and a second bottle of Chianti had been opened that Anna decided the time had come to make her position clear.

  ‘Irene phoned me after you left this evening and said you saw things our way, Nick. Thank God we don’t have to argue about it.’

  ‘Except with Dad.’

  ‘He’ll see reason in the end. He has to. He can’t stay there much longer on his own, he really can’t. Pru found him on the drawing-room floor when she arrived to clean one day a few weeks back. He’d fallen over and couldn’t get up. What would have happened if she hadn’t turned up? He drinks too much, you know. It’s got steadily worse since Mum died. I don’t blame him, but, well, this is a golden opportunity to do something about a problem we’d otherwise have to face up to sooner or later.’

  ‘I think we should appeal to his professionalism. Stress the historical importance of Elspeth’s project.’

  ‘Elspeth already, is it?’

  ‘If you let Irene emphasize Dad’s supposed inability to look after himself,’ Nick hurried on, ‘he’ll just dig his heels in.’

  ‘OK. I’ll restrain her as best I can.’

  ‘Basil tells me he doesn’t want his share.’

  ‘That’s his vow of poverty, chastity and obedience for you. He manages the first two like a dream. Anyway, he can’t hold himself totally aloof. If I get the money together to buy a little house, he’ll move with me. He’ll benefit even if he doesn’t profit.’

  ‘It’s cramped here for the two of you, I can see that.’

  ‘It was a sight worse when Zack was still at home. Not that he did much more than sleep here a few nights a week.’

  ‘It was good of you to take Basil in.’

  ‘No choice, really. He is my brother.’

  ‘And counsellor on the larger mysteries of the world,’ said Basil, padding in from the kitchen. ‘Of which our potential benefactor is a prime example.’

  Nick looked up at him. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, who is Mr Tantris exactly?’

  ‘A rich man with a weakness for antique stained glass,’ said Anna.

  ‘And that satisfies you as a comprehensive study of his character and career?’

  ‘I don’t need satisfying.’ Anna chuckled. ‘Not where friend Tantris is concerned, anyway.’

  ‘We know absolutely nothing about him.’

  ‘He wants to buy Trennor for more than it’s worth, Basil. What more do we need to know?’

  ‘Aren’t you even curious about him?’

  ‘I’m curious about what I’ll find to do with his money.’

  ‘It’ll be Dad’s money, actually.’

  ‘I can see why you were thrown out of that monastery, you know. You’re so picky.’

  ‘I wasn’t thrown out. I left of my own accord.’

  ‘Sounds to me like getting your resignation in before you were sacked.’

  ‘Is it always as bad as this here?’ put in Nick.

  ‘Usually worse,’ Basil replied with a cosmetically beatific smile. ‘Anna’s on her best behaviour for your sake.’

  ‘Shut up.’ Anna’s snappishness was still good-humoured, but it was apparent to Nick that it would not be so indefinitely.

  ‘Can’t I ask a couple of simple questions?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s a pity.’

  ‘Or a mercy.’

  ‘Only ’

  Anna sighed heavily. ‘What?’

  ‘They were rather pertinent questions, actually.’ Basil looked at each of them in turn.

  ‘But I suppose they can wait.’

  And wait they did. Which was just as well, Nick reflected, as he drove back to Saltash that night. Because some of the answers might have made the prospect of their family gathering at Trennor the next day seem less appealing—and less straightforward—than they all wanted to believe. The way ahead was clear and logical and mutually beneficial. And it was about more than money. A small piece of history would be served in the process. The Doom Window project was not just a pretext to winkle their father out of Trennor and liberate some capital. It was an opportunity that grew more golden the longer you studied it. All that remained was to convince one old man of the obvious.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Godfrey Paleologus had extended Trennor to either side, so that it was noticeably wider than it was deep, with several rooms having windows to both front and back. With the stonework obscured by whitewash, the only clues to its original size were the plainer casements of the central block and the ancient granite porch over the front door. A barn behind the house was also original, and looked it, despite re-roofing. It shared what had once been the farmyard with a large and unattractive garage. There was a flower garden at the front, divided by a path that led straight to the door from a pedestrian gate on to the lane. Once it had passed Trennor, this lane dwindled into a track—a muddy one at that, thanks to the proximity of a stream that trickled down from the hill above into a creek several fields to the south.

  Before reaching the house, the lane ran past the long, Cornish-hedged lawn that old Godfrey had fashioned out of a weed-choked paddock. From an approaching car this was the first part of the property that came into sight round a kink in the lane to the west. It led, like a broad green carpet, towards the house itself.

  Many years’ worth of memories were compressed into the moment when Irene steered out of the bend late on Sunday morning and Nick saw the lawn, and then the house, ahead of them. Every arrival of his childhood—Easter, summer and Christmas—was simultaneously conjured in his mind. In early years, his mother had driven Irene, Anna and him down in the Mini, while his father had taken Andrew and Basil in the Rover. Later, about the age of eleven, Nick had been elevated to the boys’ car. He smiled at the recollection of how proud that had made him, seeming to smell again as he did so the exact scents of the worn leather seats and his father’s pipe smoke.

  ‘I’m glad you’re in a good mood,’ said Irene, glancing round at him. ‘Let’s hope it lasts.’

  Irene’s apprehensiveness had been apparent all morning. She had blamed it on worries about whether Moira and Robbie, her bar assistants, would be able to cope with the Sunday lunchtime trade at the Old Ferry. Nick had not even tried to reassure her on the point. He knew her state of mind had nothing to do with Moira and Robbie. And he strongly suspected that she knew he knew. ‘What do you think Mum would say about all this?’ he asked as Irene slowed for the turn into the yard.

  ‘She’d see it as a heaven-sent opportunity to move somewhere smaller and more manageable.’

  Yes, Nick silently agreed, she probably would, being even less sentimental than their father. And she would know how to manipulate the old man into agreeing with her. It remained to be seen whether her children would prove equal to the task.

  ‘Good. The others are already here.’

  Since Nick was supposed to be the surprise package of the day, it had been agreed that they should arrive last. Andrew’s Land Rover and Anna’s Micra were standing next to each other in the lee of the barn. Irene pulled in behind them and stopped.

  ‘Here we go, then.’ She lowered the sun-visor and squinted into the mirror, primping her hair and checking her makeup. ‘Over the bloody top.’

  ‘We’re not going into battle, Irene.’

  ‘Go on thinking that and you could end up as the first casualty.’

  ‘There don’t need to be any casualties.’

  ‘OK.’ Irene took a deep breath. ‘I’ll be calm and positive. And the soul of diplomacy. Will that do?’

  ‘If you can keep it up.’

  ‘Think I can’t?’

  ‘I’m not saying that. I just—’

  ‘C
ome on,’ she cut him short, opening the door and turning to climb out. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  Michael Paleologus at home among his children was as rare a spectacle as it was deceptive. He looked every inch the fond and doting parent, smiling and joking as they gathered round. He appeared both surprised and pleased when Nick came in with Irene and emphasized how it did his heart good to see them all together.

  Only the addition of the words ‘here at Trennor’, accompanied by a knowing twitch of his smile, hinted at the argument they had come to present.

  Nick’s first impression was that Irene and Anna had exaggerated their father’s frailty. True, he was rounder shouldered and thinner than ever, but no more so than the general ageing process could account for. This was a man, after all, born in the summer the Battle of the Somme had been waged, whose first memory of world events was, appropriately enough, Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922. He still dressed much as he had sixty years ago—in baggy tweed and corduroy and a cardigan whose pockets sagged under the weight of pipe, matches and tobacco-pouch. Smoking, combined with the effects of sundry archaeological expeditions over the years to North African wadis and West Asian plains, had left his face creviced like a dried river-bed. His hair—of which he still had a fine head—was yellowy grey, his eyes blue-green and magnified by the lenses of his glasses, on which Nick noticed a blurring galaxy of fingerprints and grease smears.

  Only when the old man walked any distance—such as from the drawing room to the dining room—did his unsteadiness and shortness of breath reveal themselves. He clutched at chair-backs and door frames on the way, looking in such moments bewildered by his own feebleness. Then Trennor suddenly ceased to seem a place where he could be safely left to live out his days. The rambling layout and inadequate heating were bad enough. But there were also rugs curling at the edges and worn stair-carpet to be taken into consideration, not to mention the treacherously steep steps down to the cellar. Nick saw decrepitude wherever he glanced, in the sagging furniture and fraying curtains, in the dust laden display cases of Roman coins and pre-Roman skull fragments, in the faded photographs and oriental urns, in all the accumulated detritus of his family’s past. Their very surroundings spoke of the need for change.