by John Burke
‘Exactly. Because that’s just what happened, isn’t it?’
With hardly a hesitation Caspian said: ‘It must have been.’
‘Sit with Judith a while, will you? I’ll go and settle one or two things.’
When he had left the room, Judith picked thoughtfully at the frilled edge of a pillow. At last she said: ‘I’m so grateful to you both. I still don’t understand, but I know—somehow I know—that if it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t be—’
‘It’s over,’ said Bronwen. ‘Don’t try to remember.’
‘But I do keep trying to remember. It’s all so strange, I seem to see things, and if I close my eyes I start a sort of dream, and then it’s all gone again.’
‘Let it go.’
‘Somebody…something…wanted my baby. And if it hadn’t been for you—’
‘It was a terrible dream,’ said Caspian, ‘and it’s over. You have David, you have your son.’
‘But poor mother—’
‘Is at rest.’
It was a platitude, the old conventional catch-phrase. He could only hope it might be true. Between the stirrup and the ground I mercy asked, I mercy found. If it were not so, and there were no forgiveness.…
Bronwen said: ‘Think of the future, and of young…but have you decided what you’re going to call him?’
‘Alexander,’ said Judith.
Caspian tugged at his beard, embarrassed, and both women laughed.
‘Because,’ said Judith, ‘although I don’t know quite what you did, or why it had to be done, I know that my son has to be named Alexander.’
It was that night, after they had dined and raised their glasses to the future of this young Brobury and the other young Broburys there might later be, that Bronwen said gently to her husband:
‘And how shall we name our child?’
‘There’ll be time enough to worry about that when we’ve decided to have one.’
‘The decision was made,’ she said, ‘that night in Wales.’
He stared. ‘But it’s too early to tell.’
‘Not for us. I know it’s so.’
She drew his mind into hers. Their rhythms clashed, went into a drumming counterpoint as he resisted and refused momentarily to believe, and then fell into a peaceful unison.
‘Yes,’ he said aloud.
And silently he told her she was right, of course she was right, and he knew and felt all she felt.
‘But what may a son of ours inherit?’ he asked.
‘Or a daughter.’
‘A child who could read its parents’ minds.…’
‘No,’ he laughed, ‘oh, no!’
She was caught up in his alarm, and in his doubts, and in a sudden fear that their own unique closeness would be despoiled and invaded. Then they were both swept up in a tide of love and laughter, knowing that from all that was good between them there could come nothing that was not even better.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
English writer John Burke was born in Rye, Sussex, but soon moved to Liverpool, where his father was a Chief Inspector of Police.
Burke became a prominent science fiction fan in the late 1930s, and with David McIlwain he jointly edited one of the earliest British fanzines, The Satellite, to which another close friend, Sam Youd, was a leading contributor. All three men would become well-known SF novelists after the war, writing as Jonathan Burke, Charles Eric Maine, and John Christopher, respectively.
Burke’s first novel, Swift Summer (1949), won an Atlantic Award in Literature from the Rockefeller Foundation, and although he went on to become a popular SF and crime novelist, all his work was of a high literary standard.
During the early 1950s he wrote numerous science fiction novels that were published in hardcover as well as paperback, and his short stories appeared regularly in all of the leading SF magazines, most notably in New Worlds and Authentic Science Fiction.
In the mid-1950s he worked in publishing, first as Production Manager for the prominent UK publisher, Museum Press, and then in an editorial capacity for the Books for Pleasure Group. In 1959 he was employed as a Public Relations Executive for Shell International Petroleum, before being appointed as European Story Editor for 20th Century-Fox Productions in 1963.
His cinematic expertise led to his being commissioned to pen dozens of bestselling novelizations of popular film and TV titles, ranging from such movies as A Hard Day’s Night, Privilege, numerous Hammer Horror films, and The Bill. He also did adaptations of Gerry Anderson’s UFO TV series (under his pseudonym, Robert Miall). A member of the Crime Writers’ Association, he published many crime and detective novels on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1960s. He also edited the highly successsful anthology series, Tales of Unease.
Burke went on to write more than 150 books in all genres, including work in collaboration with his wife, Jean; and also published nonfiction works on an astonishing variety of subjects, most notably music.
After finally settling in the Scottish countryside, Burke continued to write well into his eighth decade, and in later years many of his best supernatural and macabre stories were collected and anthologized. His latest collection, Murder, Mystery, and Magic, was a Borgo Press original, as was his powerful final novel, The Nightmare Whisperers, completed shortly before his passing. He died on 21 September 2011, aged 89. He is survived by his wife, Jean, and seven children, and is sorely missed by his many fans and admirers. His writing is destined to live on, however, with Borgo Press reissuing some of his classic SF and macabre stories in the near future.