The Hour of Camelot

by Alan Fenton

  ‘What do I do?’

  If he had expected her to plead with him to stay, he was disappointed. ‘Do as he says.’

  ‘It was only his advice.’

  ‘No it wasn’t,’ she said, ‘it was an order.’

  His reaction was almost petulant. ‘You want me to go.’ ‘You know that isn’t true,’ she said. ‘It’s simply that it’s probably the best thing to do. After Arthur, your first duty is to your family. You must go to them.’

  His duty! Could this be the same woman who had scorned him when, not so long ago, he had spoken of his duty to visit his family? What had transformed her? Why was she now allowing him – no, urging him – to leave Camelot? Why was this passionate, possessive woman not begging him to stay? Had her love cooled? Was that it? Though if it had, why had she not told him so? Ginny usually had no difficulty speaking her mind. A pang of fear . . . was there someone else? He tried to block out the unworthy thought. Nevertheless, in the days and nights that followed, it continued to knock gently but persistently at his door.

  Lanky, too, had difficulty understanding Ginny. ‘Why did you let him go?’

  ‘Because he needs his space,’ said Guinevere. ‘Everyone does. I could have made him stay, of course I could, but if I had, the day would have come when he resented me for doing it. His decisions have to be his, not mine. Else what sort of man would he be? Not one who could love me, that’s for sure. Perhaps not one that I could love. No, Lanky, if I had put my foot down, it would never have been the same between us.’

  Lanky was impressed. Guinevere was not ruled entirely by her heart after all. When the volcano blew its top, sensible Ginny had somehow survived the eruption. Passion and sense. What a devastating combination!

  What Lanky did not know was how much concealing her true feelings had cost Guinevere in mental turmoil and lost sleep. Had she done the right thing, she asked herself. Or had she been a fool? Had she bound Lancelot to her with invisible tendrils of love? Or had she cut for ever the bonds that tied them?

  Forty One

  From under drooping lids Harold Pemberton’s shrewd eyes considered Lancelot. ‘Why have you come this time?’

  Good question. How to answer it? Because Arthur ordered him to? Because he felt guilty for rejecting Helena, and abandoning his son? Because he was racked by divided loyalties? Because he wanted to settle down with his family? ‘I like to keep in touch,’ was all he said.

  Only Harold could sip a whisky and soda and look profoundly sceptical at the same time. ‘A handful of visits over the years is not what I call keeping in touch.’

  An apologetic shrug. ‘Time passes so quickly.’

  ‘Galahad misses having a father. Not that he would admit it.’ ‘How is he?’

  Harold refilled his glass. ‘Fine.’ A few seconds contemplation, and he changed his mind. ‘No, dammit, he’s not fine. That bloody woman has got her claws even deeper into him.’

  That bloody woman being, presumably, Harold’s wife, the devout Francesca.

  ‘He’s under his granny’s thumb, still carries a bible around everywhere. Knows the whole thing by heart – New and Old Testaments.’ Harold Pemberton downed his drink in one ferocious gulp. ‘My own Grandson! Used to be such a great kid. I worshipped him. Now look at him. Sixteen going on sixty! Hardly speaks to me any more. Thinks I’m a godless sinner – which of course I am, but what’s it to him? That woman has taken over his mind, turned him into a religious freak. Praying and reading the good book is about all he does. Next thing you know she’ll incarcerate him in some monastery. Get him away from here, Lance, grab him before the priests do. It may be too late, but it’s worth a try. Take him back to Camelot with you and make a man of him.’

  Though Harold’s outburst came as a shock to Lancelot, it clarified his thinking and firmed his resolve. For Helena he felt goodwill, and would do anything he could for her, short of taking her back to Camelot. That he could not do; there was only one woman in his life. Galahad, though, was an altogether different matter.

  Each time she saw Lancelot again, Helena was forced to acknowledge to herself that she had driven away the only man she had ever loved. One evening she told him the story of the Snow Queen who fell in love with a handsome young man and turned his heart to ice so that he would stay with her for ever, and of how he lived under her spell, until one day the girl he loved found him, and shed tears over him, and melted his heart. It was her way of telling him that she loved him. The little tale of the Snow Queen moved Lancelot more than any declaration of love could have done. Listening to it, he almost persuaded himself that he was that young man, and that Helena had found him and shed tears over him and melted his heart. If at that moment she had asked him to, he would have stayed.

  But she did not. Knowing him as she did, she knew he could never be Battersea man, never commute to the office every day, or kick a ball in the park with Galahad at weekends. Lancelot was not born to be a husband and father, so what would be the point of dragging him up the aisle? It was guilt, not love, that had brought him back to her, and a bad conscience was no basis for a good marriage.

  It took several days for her to pluck up the courage to say what in her heart she knew she had to say: ‘This life is not for you.’

  About to protest, he thought better of it. She deserved the truth. ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘it isn’t.’

  ‘Come and see me as often as you can.’ A brave smile. ‘Don’t worry, Lance, I shall be fine.’

  He was grateful for that. ‘And Galahad?’

  ‘All he does, all he has ever done, is study the scriptures and pray.’ Her voice broke. ‘Oh, Lance,’ – tears shone in her eyes – ‘he scarcely notices me any more.’

  ‘That can’t be true.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is. Mother has taken him over. He needs to get away from her. He needs a life.’ She brushed a thread of cotton from Lancelot’s shoulder. ‘He needs a father.’

  ‘Would you let me take him back to Camelot?’ A long pause. ‘He would come and see me?’ ‘Yes.’

  ‘Often?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘As often as I can,’ he said.

  ‘And if he doesn’t like Camelot?’ ‘I’ll bring him back, I promise you.’

  ‘Don’t ask him to fight,’ she said. ‘He won’t kill, Lance, whatever the cause.’

  ‘I shall never ask him to harm a fellow human being,’ he promised.

  Helena sighed and straightened her shoulders, her decision made. ‘Then as far as I am concerned he is free to go. If you can convince him, I won’t stand in his way.’

  At first he tiptoed round the subject, fearing to scare Galahad off. Would he like to spend more time with his father, do things together, as fathers and sons ought to do? A change of scenery, perhaps, just for a while? Camelot, for example?

  It was a sufficiently startling suggestion to make Galahad put down his bible. After some thought, he asked, ‘Why did you go to Camelot?’

  ‘To serve Arthur.’ ‘You kill people?’ ‘Sometimes, yes.’

  ‘What is God’s sixth commandment?’ ‘Thou shalt not kill.’

  ‘But you disobey Him.’

  ‘I do what I believe is right,’ said Lancelot.

  They were at least communicating, though it was hard to reach a teenager whose entire view of life was shaped by what he read in the bible.

  ‘I doubt that Camelot is the place for me.’ ‘What is wrong with it?’

  ‘You wage war,’ said Galahad. ‘War is wrong. Killing is wrong.’

  He did not much care for the words, but how he admired the way they were spoken! His son had a mind of his own, and the courage to match it. He was proud of him.

  Francesca opposed Galahad’s leaving, and said so in her customary uncompromising fashion: ‘No one will ever take him away from me. God will not permit it.’

  Had it ended there, the story might have been different, but she made the mistake of overplaying her hand. Afraid of losing Galahad,
she tried to convince him that his father and mother were trying to separate him from the only person in the world who cared about him. ‘I am the one in this house who has your best interests at heart, my darling, the only one who truly loves you,’ she insisted tearfully, embracing her grandson so tightly he could hardly breathe.

  Though Galahad loved his grandmother, his love for her was by no means exclusive. He loved his mother, and even – though he might not have shown it recently – that incorrigible old sinner, his grandfather, who had confessed more than once to breaking the seventh commandment – Thou shalt not commit adultery .

  The truth was that the only exclusive commitment Galahad was prepared to make was to God. No one owned him, not his grandmother, not his mother, not granddad, not anyone. Asserting that she was the only one who cared about him was a mistake. It wasn’t true, and he knew it. His mother loved him, and her love, unlike gran’s, was unselfish. Or why would she be encouraging him to make his own decision? One thing had become clear; it was time for him to get out of the house. God’s ways were mysterious; He had not yet revealed how He expected Galahad to serve Him.

  He decided to take a chance. If God did not approve of his going to Camelot, He would find a way of telling him. He went to his father and told him he was willing to give Camelot a try. ‘That is if you still want me.’

  There was nothing Lancelot wanted more.

  When Galahad told Francesca he was leaving home to go to Camelot with his father, she covered her ears and ran out of the room weeping. Running up the stairs screaming all the way she locked herself in her bedroom and vowed never to come out. Galahad tried to talk to her through the door, but she drowned out his pleas with shrieking and sobbing.

  Overjoyed that, as he put it, his grandson had at last been “given the chance to lead a man’s life”, Harold was nevertheless saddened at the prospect of being parted from him. Embracing Galahad roughly, he was moved and astonished to feel an answering pressure. He would have been even more astonished had he known that, after their last goodbye, Galahad went to his room and wept as he packed a suitcase. In a sudden rush of feeling he had never before experienced, he remembered how he used to sit on his granddad’s knee, pulling the loose skin under his chin, stroking the veins on the back of his hand.

  ‘Why are your veins swollen, granddad?’ ‘Because I’m getting old, boy.’

  ‘You’ll never be old, granddad.’ ‘Wish it were true.’

  ‘Why are they blue?’

  ‘Blue blood, Gally. I’m descended from kings. That means you are too.’

  ‘Am I really?’

  ‘You most certainly are, your majesty.’

  Hugging his mother goodbye, Galahad was ready to change his mind, but she pushed him out of the door. ‘See you soon,’ she said, and blew a kiss.

  When he and Lancelot had gone, Helena and her father sat silently at the kitchen table, Harold studying the veins on the back of his hands, Helena thinking of Lancelot.

  Forty Two

  Too shy to be introduced to the Round Table, Galahad was taken by his father straight to Arthur’s apartment where Arthur, Guinevere, and a few close friends and aides waited to greet him.

  ‘It is a pleasure and an honour to welcome Lancelot’s son,’ said Arthur, holding his arms wide, inviting Galahad to accept his embrace. Galahad clutched his bible and looked at the floor.

  Lancelot felt obliged to explain. ‘He’s a bit overwhelmed by all this attention. He means no offence.’

  ‘None taken,’ said Arthur. Expecting to see a young replica of Lancelot, he looked in vain for some family resemblance. No son could have resembled his father less; Lancelot, tall and slender with dark hair and brown eyes, Galahad short and stocky with white blonde hair and blue eyes. Yet different in appearance though they were, there was something about the teenager that reminded Arthur irresistibly of Lance, something they had in common that distinguished them from other men; an aura of remoteness, of not being involved with those around them.

  Whilst Arthur made the introductions, Guinevere hung back. For her it was painful to have to confront Lancelot’s past in the shape of his son, the tangible expression of his relationship with Helena. And then Arthur was introducing them: ‘Darling, this is Galahad.’ As their eyes met and they shook hands, the gauche sixteen year old and the sophisticated woman of the world, Galahad was her slave, ready to die for her. Never in his short life had he seen such a beautiful woman. Spellbound, he could not stop gazing at her. Guinevere’s colour was high, her eyes shining. She found this intensely serious, rather timid young man, charming, and his undisguised admiration flattering.

  ‘How happy you must be, Lance, to have your son with you in Camelot,’ said Arthur. ‘I know he will make his father proud – as proud as he must be of his father.’

  The next day Mordred visited Camelot’s library, borrowed a book he had never opened before, and for a few days studied it with great attention. When he felt sufficiently prepared, he invited Galahad to his room for tea.

  The door panel buzzed, the speaker crackled.

  Name?

  ‘Galahad.’

  In a nano-second the computer matched voice and iris with its records.

  Enter, Galahad.

  Mordred jumped up from the sofa. ‘Come in, come in,’ he said eagerly. ‘Welcome.’

  A respectful bow of the head. ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Please! No need to call me sir. Mordred is my name. Or Mord, when you get to know me better.’

  Sipping his tea, Galahad looked round the small bedsit, observing how functional it was. There was not a photograph, not a painting or drawing, not a single decorative object to express the occupant’s taste; only exposed light bulbs, a bed, a sofa, two uncomfortable wooden chairs and curtainless windows.

  ‘Uncluttered is what I call it,’ said Mordred, following his visitor’s eyes.

  ‘Oh, but I d-didn’t m-mean to . . . ’ stammered Galahad. ‘Not everyone’s cup of tea, I know. Some people like flowered

  curtains, oodles of bric-a-brac. Frankly, I find all that sort of thing distracting. I need my undivided concentration for what I do in my spare time,’ said Mordred, leaving a void of silence that Galahad felt compelled to fill. ‘And what is that?’

  ‘I read books,’ said Mordred, who had scarcely read a book in his life. ‘Well, actually, one book in particular,’ he murmured, looking as ashamed as if he had just confessed to a mortal sin. With a self-conscious twitch of the hand he indicated a book lying next to him on the arm of the sofa. ‘That one,’ he murmured.

  The book had a plain cover. As Mordred opened it, a look of wonder spread across Galahad’s face. ‘The Bible!’

  ‘I dare say it seems strange to you,’ said Mordred, ‘but the Old and New Testament tell me all I need to know about this life. And the life to come,’ he added, kissing the bible in a pious gesture.

  ‘Not strange at all,’ said Galahad. ‘I read the bible too.’ Mordred’s eyes dilated. ‘You read the bible!’

  ‘Every day,’ Galahad assured him.

  ‘Astounding! Simply astounding!’ said Mordred, as though he could scarcely believe his ears. ‘Well, well, well. How extraordinary that we should meet like this. What are the chances of you and I meeting? A million to one, I should imagine. So few people read the good book these days.’

  Galahad nodded in solemn agreement. ‘That’s because most of them dedicate their lives to material things.’

  ‘How true,’ said Mordred,’ how very true. And then, seizing the opportunity to demonstrate his biblical credentials, ‘Man doth not live by bread only,’ he observed, raising his eyes heavenward, ‘but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord . . . ’

  ‘Amen,’ said Galahad.

  Mordred extended his hand. ‘I can see that you and I will be good friends,’ he said. ‘Would you care to sit and study the bible with me now and then?’

  ‘An excellent idea,’ said Galahad.

  One day, tho
ught Mordred, Galahad could prove useful, more than useful. Calm and unflappable, he seemed detached from the emotions that afflicted other men’s souls. Yet beneath that placid surface, he suspected, was a very different person, a compulsively driven young man who set himself the very highest standards, and was intolerant of the failings of others. Didn’t they say still waters ran deep? Unless he was very much mistaken, these particular still waters, untroubled though they appeared to be, would begin to seethe and boil when a few drops of poison were administered.

  Forty Three

  Rain clouds hung low over the Atlantic, the surging sea thrashing the shoreline, scattering cascades of white foam.

  As Arthur jogged along the beach towards Castle Point he heard a voice calling his name. He stopped to listen. There it was again: ‘Arthur! Arthur!’ Through the mist he saw Mordred stumbling along the beach, and waited for him to catch up. ‘Looking for me, Mord?’

  ‘No,’ said Mordred, his chest heaving, ‘a fortuitous encounter. I was taking a stroll.’

  Never once had Arthur seen his nephew walking on the beach, nor indeed anywhere else for that matter, his invariable means of locomotion being not legs but hovercart. ‘I know you’re not a jogger,’ he said. ‘Care to walk with me to Castle Point?’

  ‘With pleasure.’

  The two men moved on in silence, each absorbed in his own thoughts. When Arthur was a boy and Merlin’s pupil, the Magus had taught him how to imagine himself into other people’s heads. Though Mordred guarded his thoughts, Arthur saw enough of them to know that his nephew had something important to say, and that this meeting was no accident.

  As if in confirmation, Mordred said, ‘As it happens, I do have a couple of things to share with you.’ He darted a sidelong look at Arthur. ‘In confidence.’

  They walked at a brisk pace, Mordred’s breathing growing more and more laboured. ‘Mind if we . . . ’ he panted ‘take time out?’