Restoration
Page 38
I nodded. The King watched me. I wanted to tell him that he could have chosen no better place, but under his gaze it was difficult to bring out the words.
"You need not comment," he said after a moment, "for I know everything you feel. But look at this. Do you remember to whom you gave it?"
"Look at what, Sir?"
"At this."
The King held out his hand (encased in an emerald coloured glove) and I saw in his palm a small piece of card, very soiled and curled and thinned by time. I took it up and peered at it and, after looking at it blankly for a second or two, recognised my name upon it, R. Merivel. Physician. Chirurgeon. and my old address in Cheapside.
I looked up. Across the features of the King now spread the smile, the effect of which upon my heart it is impossible to describe.
"Yes," he said, "your card. Shown to me not long after the fire by one of my hatmakers, Arthur Goffe. He told me that it was you who had saved his wife."
"Well, I and another man, much larger and stronger than me. But I did not know this was one of your people."
"No. Of course you did not. And even if you had known, it would not have been me who drove you to bravery. It was others, was it not? A certain glovemaker and his dear wife?"
"Yes."
"How fortunate, Merivel. For it is one of my beliefs that we cannot truly live until the debts we owe our parents have been paid. For they and their deaths can never be forgotten. Is that not so?"
"Yes."
"Even in an age in which we wisely practice the excellent art of oblivion, certain things remain."
"Yes."
"And another thing, if I am not mistaken, is your love for this place."
"Yes. I love it. From the day when I first saw it – "
"So I knew you would come back here. Gates and I were entirely agreed. We knew that one day you would come and that this is how I would find you."
"You knew?"
"Naturally. But I remember also that there was always one room that entranced you, a round room in the West Tower, and yet I heard that you had never found any use for it."
"No. I think that when I lived here what I used to believe was that this room was… beyond me… too high, or some such thing… as if I could not understand what I should put in it… as if, almost, it was a part of my mind that I could not see."
"Why do you not, then, go and look at it now?"
"Now?"
"Yes."
"Well, Sir, I will, if you wish, yet I would prefer to continue our walk."
The King gave a hoot of laughter, which disturbed the deer and sent them bounding away.
"'Continue our walk'! "Continue our walk'! Look at me, Merivel."
I tried to look up into the King's face, but the sun was in my eyes, so I shaded them with my hand.
"Go back to the house," instructed the King, "and go up the stairs and into this empty room. And see whether you can make sense of it now."
"Very well, Sir."
"Then we may continue our walk if you wish."
"As you will, Sire."
"Off you go, then."
I paused and stared up at the West Tower. It was many, many months since my thoughts had returned to this room, which had never, in truth, been a proper room at all, but only a vacant space. Now I noticed that on the three window ledges were clustered some white birds.
"Fantails," said the King. "Very pretty, I think. It might be that, from time to time, you may decide to open a window and let them in."
"I beg your pardon, Sir?"
"Into your room."
"Let the birds into the room?"
"Into your room."
"My room?"
"Yes. I am giving you the room. It is yours. Until my reign is over and another age comes. Until then it is restored to you – in return for the life you saved and in return for the man you have become. It is your room and you can come and go from it as you please, and I will never take it from you."
Do you see me now?
I am in the room.
I am standing in the white room in my torn white nightshirt.
Merivel. Just as he was. Do you see him? He has no wig on his head. His hogs' bristles itch. He puts a hand to his cheek and discovers a cake crumb.
But I am not thinking of him. What has returned to my mind, in this high white space, is Margaret. I hold her in my arms and take off her bonnet and put a soft kiss on her fiery curls and she squeaks and kicks and blows bubbles into my face and then reaches out a fat little hand and takes hold of my nose.
I laugh and remove her hand and carry her to one of the windows, where we can hear the pigeons murmuring. I hold her up and show her the great expanse of the park that I once saw as wild, undisciplined lines of yellow and green, and dark splodges of brown and purple, and above it the sun which, in the absence of any device by which to measure time, tells me that it is mid-day on the fairest April morning of my life.
I do not know how long I remain in the room. Perhaps, when you glimpse me for the last time, the dusk is already falling. I wrap Margaret more tightly in her shawl, for it is getting cold now, and together we move towards the door.
"Tomorrow," I tell her, "I must go on to Whittlesea. But one day soon – before you have learned to walk, before I have grown too frail to climb the stairs – I shall bring you back."
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