A Very Persistent Illusion

by L. C. Tyler

  For a long time after that I would dream that I too was trapped in a metal case, unable to move, unable to see, scarcely able to breathe. It wasn’t that Niels had been killed that gave me nightmares, but the long hours that he had spent waiting for death, clinging to the last thread of life, hoping they would find him in time to die where there were living people and you could see the sun.

  Strangely I found an answer in philosophy. What if, I argued to myself, this was only my version of reality? Perhaps in another version, Niels’s version, it was I who travelled up to the Lakes with our parents and Niels who, for some good reason, stayed at home and learned later of my death in the wreckage. And possibly I died quickly and painlessly. It need not then be the case that Niels suffered like that or at all. In another reality he could have become an actuary, married a nice girl and had a whole batch of children – called Mogens, Grethe, Lise and maybe dear little Christian, the messy baby of the family.

  Of course, all that had implications for the rest of the world and the existence or not of everyone in my version of it. But, hey, I could handle that.

  So I detached myself from reality for a bit and found that it wasn’t so bad. There was nothing in my contract with the Foreign Office that demanded I should believe in the real world. When I left the Foreign Office and joined the Royal Society for Medical Education it was even less necessary.

  There were plenty of advantages. If this was my own private reality, then I could well be immortal, for example. I might be able to will things to happen. And my outlook could justifiably be completely amoral. I didn’t need anyone. I owed nothing to anyone.

  Which is how we get to where we are today.

  * * *

  ‘I am so sorry,’ says Virginia.

  ‘It’s not such a bad place to be,’ I say.

  ‘I never knew.’

  ‘I never told you.’

  ‘You should have done.’ She reaches out and touches my hand. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Another long pause.

  ‘It’s getting light,’ I say, noticing the changing colour of the sky. Beyond the net curtains, beyond the thick leaded diamonds of window glass, the sky is grey, but promising soon to be flooded with red.

  24

  Hugh

  We decide to question Daphne stone cold sober this time and ambush her as she comes down to make an early morning cup of tea. We show her the box. She reads everything thoughtfully, sipping the tea.

  ‘Well, if I had to destroy that one too, he should have told me where it was,’ she says, in a tone wives use only for discussing their husbands. ‘Best not put it out for the recycling people though.’

  ‘Did you know?’ asks Virginia.

  ‘I’d seen one of the Margaret Biggenhalgh letters before,’ says Daphne, ‘but I never mentioned it to anyone.’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ says Virginia. ‘You told me that you had found a letter from a Woman.’

  ‘So I did,’ says Daphne, conversationally. ‘I’d forgotten that. It was in the kitchen. We were drying up. It wasn’t any of the letters you have there, though – that one was quite friendly, really. Hugh must have thrown it away or hidden it somewhere else. Of course, one letter on its own didn’t mean very much.’

  ‘And the money?’ asked Virginia. ‘You must have noticed there was more money around than there should be.’

  ‘I realized that there must be money coming in from somewhere.’ Daphne sighs. ‘There were people that your father – Hugh – used to meet. I don’t think they were necessarily very nice people. He thought that I didn’t know where he went, but I did.’

  ‘You mean you followed him?’ asks Virginia.

  ‘Not every time. Then there were the business trips to Naples. Obviously I couldn’t just get on the bus and follow him there, but even I realized that a small British insurance company would not be doing that much legitimate business in southern Italy.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ I say. ‘Are you implying Hugh was a member of the Mafia?’

  ‘Oh, I doubt that it was anything as grand as that. Hugh didn’t like joining things unless they were connected with military history. He never joined the Rotary Club, for example. I don’t think he would have joined the Mafia either. But I think he knew people who were members of the Mafia or something very much like it. Your father – Hugh – did not take me much into his confidence, but I did work out most of it. It was helpful that Hugh always assumed I was stupid. You can learn quite a lot that way. He never told me anything about Malcolm though.’

  ‘Don’t you feel just a little bit betrayed?’ asks Virginia.

  ‘No more than usual,’ says Daphne. ‘He did it for you, Virginia. He only wanted to give you the very best. He would have died for you.’

  ‘And would he have killed for me?’

  ‘What a silly question,’ says Daphne. ‘Both of us would have killed for you if we’d had to. That goes without saying.’

  * * *

  It’s the last leg of a long journey. I am driving Virginia back to London and to her flat in Clerkenwell. The journey is mainly undertaken in silence. We both have a lot to be silent about.

  ‘I’d still like to say a few words at the funeral,’ I venture as we reach the South Bank. ‘Hugh may have been a Mafioso, but my hunch is that he was a nice Mafioso. The sort of Mafioso you’d really want to buy your car insurance from.’

  ‘Do you think guys in shiny suits and very dark sunglasses will show up at the crematorium?’ asks Virginia. ‘It may not only be colleagues from the insurance world who’ve heard that he’s died.’

  ‘I’ll watch out for them,’ I say. ‘If I see some, I’ll cut some of the Mafia jokes from the speech.’

  ‘My mother could have been making it all up or just plain wrong. Mothers are wrong more often than not, in my experience. I don’t remember Dad . . . Hugh . . . making trips to Italy more than once or twice. That would make him a pretty half-hearted Mafioso, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘So where did the school fees come from?’

  ‘They were cheaper then.’

  ‘Hugh must have been a bit of a crook though.’

  ‘Yes, but only a bit. I’ll tell the undertakers we won’t need the full gangland funeral.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ I say. ‘I’ve always wanted to go to a proper gangland funeral.’

  Obviously, I have no way of knowing that I won’t be going to Hugh’s funeral. That knowledge comes later, though not very much later.

  I drop Virginia off in Rosebery Avenue. We agree that the next time we meet will probably be in Horsham. I kiss her on the cheek and she skips lightly up the steps, her skirt swaying from side to side, and vanishes into the block of flats. I still haven’t asked her to marry me, but there’s plenty of time for that. My immediate concerns are slightly different.

  For some time now I have successfully avoided thinking about the reception I will receive tomorrow at work, when Humph will fill me in on recent developments in the Digby Spain saga and let me know whether I still have a job. Or not. What I need to do urgently, therefore, is to phone Fat Dave and get him to buy me a drink. After all, it’s his round.

  25

  Stockholm, January 1650

  It was cold. So very cold.

  The giant, iron-bound rear wheels of the ornate royal coach crunched through the snow in the wake of the two smaller front wheels and the sixteen clattering iron-shod hooves. The previous day, the sun had melted the surface a little, but the merciless chill of a clear, starry night had frozen everything even harder than before. It was one of the coldest winters in memory, during a century that would not be noted for its warmth. And this was the coldest time of day, if day could be said to exist at all in January in Sweden. It would be another five hours until the sun rose. Then much the same before it set again. It was a good place to own a candle shop.

  The philosopher, though huddled in several layers of fur, shivered. He pulled the softest of the pelts up as far as his grey, but carefully trimmed be
ard. This was an hour to be in bed, preferably in the company of a pretty and compliant member of the opposite sex, not a time to be bouncing over hard and rutted black ice in a coach with primitive suspension and a coachman instructed to get you to your destination in good time rather than in good condition. He could try telling the coachman to slow down, but he knew it would make no difference. Somebody who can get the greatest philosopher of the seventeenth century out of bed at half past four on a winter morning was not going to take any lip from a mere coachman if he dared to arrive a couple of minutes late. And in any case, if it was cold down here amongst the sables and reindeer skins, it must be quite a lot fresher up on the coachman’s box, with nothing except the royal livery between you and the clear night sky. The coachman had more than one reason for wanting to get this journey over as quickly as he could.

  ‘Ooof,’ observed the philosopher as they hit a particularly resistant rut.

  The philosopher listened out for the church bells, as probably did the coachman. The bells had rung the half-hour from their several dark, granite towers some time ago. The moment they rang the new hour in, she would be pacing up and down in her chamber, increasingly impatient and increasingly petulant. You keep queens waiting at your peril.

  The philosopher banged on the roof of the carriage with his stick and yelled: ‘Plus vite! Hurtig! Allez!’

  This request was answered immediately with the crack of a whip, and the philosopher was flung backwards into his seat. As the works of a number of clocks ticked unstoppably towards announcing the new hour, a coach containing an elderly French philosopher lurched on recklessly through the pitch-black, narrow and closely shuttered streets of old Stockholm.

  * * *

  You had to admit it. She looked magnificent in that ermine dressing gown (or whatever it was) seated by the regally vast and dangerously spitting fire of birch and pine logs. Hardly more than a girl really, but well used to exercising power and perfectly aware of the effect she had on men, hence not doing the dressing gown right up to her throat, or even close to her throat really. Could she be wearing anything at all underneath it? Best not to speculate, especially if you were an elderly French philosopher in unavoidable exile. The palace was full of courtiers (and one rather elderly philosopher) wishing they were thirty years younger.

  Few courtiers got what the philosopher got, however: five hours of the Queen’s uninterrupted and uninterruptible attention, three times a week, even if those hours were from five to ten in what the Swedes deluded themselves was ‘morning’. Fortunately the candle shops kept the palace well supplied.

  The subject of today’s tutorial was the soul, the body and the union between the two, which the philosopher thought might be a more promising topic than optics or mathematics. But the Queen’s attention was already starting to drift.

  ‘Do you think I should invade Portugal?’ she asked.

  ‘Portugal?’ asked the philosopher.

  ‘Portugal.’

  ‘It is a long way away, Your Majesty.’

  ‘It is close to Spain. I am contemplating an alliance with the King of Spain.’

  ‘In what way has Portugal offended you?’

  ‘Portugal is the enemy of my future ally. We shall invade the silly little country, two kings together.’

  And that was another of the Queen’s small peculiarities – she thought she was a king. Easy to let that one slip your memory, but fortunately the mode of address was identical.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ said the philosopher, ‘I thought that perhaps this morning – to the extent that this can be described as morning we might look at the soul, the body and the—’

  ‘Don’t philosophers have anything to say about love?’ the Queen demanded.

  ‘Love, Your Majesty?’ Where was this leading?

  ‘That’s right: love.’

  ‘The Greek philosophers did, Your Majesty, but it was often about love between men and men rather than between men and women.’

  The Queen pulled a face. ‘Meaning . . . ?’

  ‘They didn’t go into detail,’ said the philosopher.

  ‘Have you ever been physically attracted to another man, Monsieur Descartes?’

  Descartes considered. He was at an age when he felt he should be able to answer such a question honestly. Had he? There was usually something behind all of the Queen’s questions. Maybe best to stay silent then.

  The Queen (briefly forgetting she was a king) stroked the fur of her robe for a moment, running her hand slowly down from her shoulder to her thigh. It suddenly occurred to the philosopher that she must be very lonely. ‘Philosophers must fall in love sometimes, Monsieur Descartes,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Descartes. ‘As often as other people, I would imagine.’

  ‘But you never married? Never had children?’

  ‘I never married,’ said Descartes. ‘But I did have children. Well, one child anyway.’

  ‘Did have?’

  ‘She died. She was quite young.’

  ‘What was her name?’

  For a moment Descartes was unable to say anything, but eventually he got a single word out. ‘Francine,’ he said.

  ‘It’s a lovely name.’

  Descartes sniffed, nodded and looked at the fire, which was just starting to warm him.

  ‘And her mother? Is she still alive?’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Descartes, turning back to the Queen. ‘I’ve really no idea.’

  ‘I have been meaning to ask you something,’ said the Queen suddenly.

  ‘That’s what I’m here for,’ said Descartes.

  ‘Do you think I should become a Catholic?’

  There were, of course, two answers to this: yes and no. Both seemed fraught with danger – for the Queen and (more immediately) for the person advising her.

  ‘That is not something that is within my remit,’ said Descartes, who had heard rumours and was not entirely unprepared.

  ‘I thought that, as a Jesuit, you would welcome the opportunity to convert me.’

  ‘I was trained by Jesuits, Your Majesty,’ said Descartes. ‘I am not a Jesuit myself. Just a Catholic.’

  ‘So, you must believe that Catholicism is right and that all Protestants will go to hell?’

  That, of course, was the problem. Should he be complicit in sending the Queen of Sweden to hell simply in order to retain a relatively comfortable post in his old age? Surely a low probability of eternal damnation was an acceptable risk?

  ‘I have,’ said Descartes thoughtfully, ‘lived a long time amongst Protestants and they have treated me more kindly than the Catholic church would have done – if it could have got its hands on me, which is something I have worked hard to avoid. Protestants have certainly proved more friendly to philosophy of late than my own Church has and Protestant rulers – such as you are – have offered me more protection than Catholic rulers. My personal view is that . . . not all Protestants will go to hell, though I rather hope Professor Voetius of Utrecht does. In more practical terms, a Catholic queen . . . or indeed king . . . would never be allowed to rule Lutheran Sweden, which would be a bit inconvenient for you.’

  ‘I could abdicate.’

  ‘It must be very lonely to be a monarch,’ said Descartes after a long pause.

  ‘That isn’t the point,’ said the monarch.

  ‘The immediate and pressing point, Your Majesty,’ said Descartes, glancing nervously over his shoulder, ‘is that this type of talk is dangerous. I accepted your invitation to come here in part – though obviously not entirely – because it was safer than France or even Holland. I haven’t declined being burnt as a heretic in order to be sent to the block for trying to subvert the ruler of Sweden. I hope, Your Majesty, that you haven’t discussed this with anyone else? Or if you have, I hope that you have not mentioned my name?’

  The Queen said nothing to reassure him and then asked: ‘And how is the French Ambassador?’

  ‘Monsieur Chanut is making a good recovery at last. Pneumonia n
eed not prove fatal, given proper care.’

  The Queen sighed. ‘It is our harsh northern climate. You must keep warm at all costs, Monsieur Descartes. I am unreasonable in expecting you to attend upon me so early and in this cruel weather. You must tell me when I am being unreasonable.’

  Descartes shrugged, but in a hopeful way. Should he suggest a ten o’clock start? Or maybe even eleven?

  ‘I shall instruct them to put more furs in your coach,’ said the Queen decisively.

  ‘I am very grateful to Your Majesty for your concern,’ said Descartes, who had always known deep down that queens, and indeed kings, conceded very little, and this one (whichever she was) less than most. ‘Would you like me to continue with the lesson?’

  ‘Of course,’ said the Queen brightly. ‘That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?’