Prelude

by William Coles

  “Kim,” she said, and when she looked at me I could see the tears dripping down her cheeks. “I love you. I love only you.”

  I was standing up now. I’d said my piece. There was nothing more to be gained by staying. “Funny way of showing it.”

  “You’re right. I was married.” Those vile words caught in her mouth. “I’d wanted to tell you. But it had never felt right. I . . .”

  I stalked past her and stood at the door.

  She looked up at me. “I didn’t know how you’d take it. I thought it might change everything between us.”

  I laughed in disbelief. “You thought it might change everything if I knew you were married? Well, maybe it just might!”

  Her fingers, those long tapering fingers, strayed to several of the wedding pictures on the floor. She picked them up and stared at them. “We split up a year ago.” One-by-one the pictures fell from her hand. “He found someone else and he broke my heart. And then I found you.” She looked up at me. “And you made me believe in love again.”

  She blinked back the tears, and, as she sat there in front of me, with her hands in her lap, I felt the cold, raw power of the executioner at the block.

  “I can never trust you again.”

  The tears fell wet down her neck. “We divorced today,” she said. A trace of a smile wavering at the edge of her lips. “And I thought that I was free to be yours. Even if you did want to join the army.”

  She was pleading with me, imploring me to stay, to hold her. She shuffled towards me on her knees.

  And with one sharp, scything blow, I severed our love by the neck. “India, you are free to be with whomever you want.” My hand rested on the door-handle. “But it’s not going to be me.”

  I slammed the door shut behind me. India’s sobs were still ringing in my ears as I stormed down the stairs.

  I rode back to the Timbralls with this icy, icy rage clinging to me like a cloak. Oh, I had such malice in my heart that at that moment I was capable of any sort of infamy.

  I looked at my watch—her watch—and nearly stopped then and there to toss it into the bushes. I dully registered that Absence was in five minutes, but it made no odds anymore. I didn’t care what happened at Eton or with India. As far as I was concerned they could all, all of them, go to hell in a hand-basket.

  I was pedalling with psychotic fury, hurtling down the High Street, my feet relentlessly grinding, taking out my anger and my hurt on the bicycle.

  Cuckolded by my first love? I seethed with impotent rage. I never wanted to see or hear from her again. I would excise every trace of her memory from my mind.

  And as for my searching through her private papers? Compared to India’s scheming lies, that had been nothing but a minor transgression.

  I did vaguely register that she’d said she’d got divorced that day, and also that she’d denied sleeping with Savage. But my jealousy had turned me into a white-hot supernova, exuding wave after pulsating wave of anger.

  I streaked through the traffic lights, past the Burning Bush. The wheels keening faster and faster beneath me, fizzling with sympathetic rage.

  THE SEBASTOPOL CANNON ahead of me. Instinctively, I stretch out my hand to slap its broad, black flank. Only one hand on the handlebars.

  Up the little ramp to go through the archway into New Schools Yard.

  From behind a pillar, I catch a blur of movement, a glimpse of Savage’s bestial face as he thrusts forward.

  He stabs a cricket bat into my front spokes. In an instant everything stops and I am flying, flying through the air, pitched heel-over-head. In a whirl I see the arch, the Timbralls, the sky, the cannon, the Satanic glee etched into Savage’s face, and the tiles, the solid scuffed tiles of the New Schools archway, coming closer, ever closer, until with a flat thud I crash to the ground. Even as I’m losing consciousness I can hear the crack of brittle ribs being snapped in two and the sickening wrench of bones being wrung from their sockets.

  THE SOUND OF my parents’ quiet voices filtered through to me as I gradually regained consciousness.

  I could tell I was in a bed.

  For a while I lay there, trying to piece together what had happened.

  I opened my eyes.

  It was the first time I had ever seen my stepmother cry. She saw my eyes flicker. Immediately, her voice was turned into a hoarse cough and she was by my side, holding my hand. Even my father choked up. Both of them were on either side of me, with the tears pouring down Edie’s cheeks.

  After two weeks, I was back from the dead.

  Two weeks? I couldn’t believe it.

  They told me what had happened. A master had found me out cold in a pool of my own blood in the New Schools Yard. I’d have died if they hadn’t got me to Slough hospital in under fifteen minutes.

  Blood transfusions and hour upon hour of surgery to my head, my shoulders, my ribs and my shattered knee.

  They’d put me on drips and, as my muscles had atrophied by the minute, they wondered if I would ever come round, or if I would spend the rest of my days in a coma.

  I never told them that it was Savage who’d nearly killed me.

  I suppose in part it was because I thought I’d deserved it.

  My subconscious had been working overtime, digesting everything that had happened with India and me. Some coma victims can’t recall what happened before they were knocked out. But I could remember it all, from those last distraught minutes with India through to that exact moment when I had seen Savage thrusting a cricket bat through the front spokes.

  From the moment I woke up, I realised that I had behaved hatefully. I knew that India had been true to me, that she loved me and only me. And so it followed that everything else was nothing but the product of my own jealousy. Of course she was estranged from her husband—because she loved me. Of course she had not slept with Savage—because she loved me.

  India loved me and only me and so long as I clasped that one fact to my bosom, then everything else would slot into place.

  And I understood too why she’d kept her secret from me. I’d been exuding jealousy from every pore. If she’d told me everything, it would without doubt have been an unpleasant, fraught conversation; I would have behaved badly; our fledgling relationship would have been blighted.

  When you can accurately predict your lover’s rage, is it any wonder that sometimes you shirk from telling them the whole truth?

  India hadn’t lied to me. But she had held things back.

  It had been for the best. I could see that.

  And to anyone who’s wondering whether they should furnish their partner with all the tawdry details of their past, I offer but one piece of advice: seal your lips. Keep it close to your heart. For lovers are sensitive plants and they can be choked with too much information just as a flower can be stifled by too much fertilizer.

  I’m sure that, in time, India would have told me all. But there at Eton, when we had only just embarked on our voyage together?

  She was wiser by far to keep it to herself.

  So, as I lay on that bed, with my head and shoulders swathed in bandages, I was contrite. India had said she was sorry—but it was not her that needed to ask for forgiveness. It was me who should have been begging on my knees.

  And as for my jealousy, my wild, seething jealousy, it had disappeared like water seeping into the desert from a cracked bottle. So she’d had boyfriends before, had been married before, had made love before? I relished it all, welcomed all the previous men in her life, for they were the people who had made her what she was today. Who gave a jot for the past, when all that mattered was the moment and our love together?

  My parents were so pleased to see me come out of the coma. I’d never seen them so happy.

  Edie was laughing nervously as she spoke, all the while having to pinch herself that I was up and alive, and that she wasn’t sitting next to my corpse.

  It was the first time that I can ever remember my father stroking my hand. Tentative, like a young
man courting his first love.

  As my parents watched over their little nestling, the doctors came and inspected me. I started to take in my surroundings. A small white room with a television. On the shelf and by the window were dozens of cards.

  I asked for them to be brought over. Edie swept them all up.

  “Shall I read them out?” she asked.

  “It’s ok,” I replied, and she placed them by my side on the bed. My arms were so weak it was a strain to lift each one.

  I was touched. Cards from all my teachers, including some from the beaks who hadn’t taught me in years, cards from my housemates and from my classmates too. All of them with that deft touch which says we hope you pull through—but please don’t hold it against us if you do.

  Even a card from my parents. ‘Kim, get well soon. Lots of love, Mummy and D.’ Three kisses too. The tears stabbed at my eyes. I tried to blink them back.

  The number of cards left to read were dwindling and my fingers started to twitch with impatience. I’d scan one, see who it was from, and instantly go onto the next.

  For there was only one card I wanted to find.

  As the last one fell from my fingertips I knew it was not there.

  “What kind friends you have,” Edie said.

  “Yes,” I replied. I could have dissembled, but I was boiling up to know about India’s card. “Have there been any other letters? Any phone calls?”

  My parents looked at each other, shrugged.

  “I think everything’s there,” my father said.

  “Has anyone come to visit?”

  Edie perked up at that. “One girl came here twice to see you.”

  ANGELA VISITED THE next day, just after I’d finished eating soup and bread. She was wearing another mini-skirt, though a white one this time as it was the summer holidays, and a pink T-shirt. She kissed me on the cheek and sat by the side of the bed.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi.”

  “Thought you’d seen the last of me?”

  “I did,” and as she spoke all trace of jocularity was gone and she was wiping the tears from her eyes. “I did.”

  “Thank you for coming,” I said.

  She smiled through her tears. “I didn’t think anyone else from school would come to see you.”

  “You were right,” I replied. I could have small-talked, but I was too anxious. “Have you been here before?”

  “A couple of times.”

  My brain convulsed, for it seemed that fate was yet again having a joke at my expense. It was slowly dawning on me that India had not written, had not visited; that she might not even be aware of my accident.

  “How sweet of you,” I said, but already I was scheming. “I wondered . . . I wondered if you might be able to pop in on my music teacher. Just tell her what’s happened. She had some music for me. She might not have heard . . .” I trailed off. It sounded lame.

  I don’t think Angela scented anything out of the ordinary. She took India’s name and address, and promised to let her know.

  She came back the next day, and, while the news was not a disaster, I did get that deadly prickle which so often presages a shipwreck. It’s not much, just the slightest tingle, but it’s the sinking feeling in your guts when you know you’re on the verge of catastrophe.

  “There was no one there,” Angela said. “The downstairs neighbours said she moved out last week. The flat’s up for rent.”

  I took the news without a tremor.

  So India had gone. But I would track her down and beg her forgiveness.

  It took me another two weeks to get out of hospital, and from my parents’ home I sent India letters to wherever they might reach her. I sent them care of Eton College, care of Bristol University, and even care of London’s various medical schools on the off-chance that she might have been continuing her degree.

  These days, with the internet, it might have been easier to track her down.

  But twenty-five years back, it was no simple thing for a seventeen-year-old to find a lost love. I did the best I could, sent a score of love-notes. But as the weeks went by and I received no calls and no letters, there were only two possible conclusions remaining: either my letters weren’t getting to India, or she was choosing not to respond to them.

  More and more it was the latter option that came to dominate my imagination. She must have received my letters—how could she not?—and, for whatever reason, had chosen not to reply. I conjured up every single scenario I could think of: that she’d seen me at my very worst and couldn’t stomach the sight of me again; that I had driven her back into Malcolm’s arms; that, following on from her divorce, the last thing she needed was a relationship with an emotionally-retarded teenager.

  I don’t know. There may have been any number of reasons why she did not write. But by the time I arrived back at Eton for the start of the Michaelmas Half, still with a slight limp from my shattered knee-cap, I had resigned myself to the fact that India did not want to see me again.

  I thought that I deserved it, that I had behaved despicably, that I was beyond redemption.

  My father took me back to school. It was a Thursday, the second week of September, spitting with rain, and my heart was dead. My love was gone and I felt certain that no woman, no girl, would ever be able to hold anything for me again.

  A few boys were milling around. They joshed me as I limped into the Timbralls Hall. One of them took my suitcase upstairs. I followed my father out to the car. The streetlights gleamed on the wet bonnet.

  “Well, goodbye old boy,” he said. “You look after yourself.”

  He hovered. For the first time, I realised that he was unsure about what to do next.

  “Goodbye,” I said, “and thank you.” And before he could turn on his heel, I took the two steps to give him a hug. Both my arms round his waist. At first there was no response. Then I felt his arms come up warm around me. It was all a little bit rigid. But both of us were out of practice.

  We broke off. My father flushed with embarrassment. “I wish I’d been able to do that before, but . . .” He trailed off.

  “I know.”

  He paused, his hand on the car door, drawn to me yet desperate to hide any hint of emotion. “I think we should do it more often.”

  “I’d like that.”

  He gave a wave, and with a relieved roar the car thrummed off into the night.

  I waved till his taillights blinked into the darkness. It was a strange feeling. I think that hug had probably called for more courage than anything else my father had ever done.

  I mooched back into the Hall, shaking my head with amused surprise.

  My pigeon-hole was crammed with post.

  I flicked through the letters. Was I expecting something? Possibly. But I didn’t want to start hoping again, because I knew deep-down that it would only cause more pain.

  For the most part, they were ‘Get Well’ cards. But right at the back there was a small white letter, and just the sight of it made my hands tremble, for I knew that copper-plate handwriting all too well.

  India.

  I hobbled quickly up the stairs, my knee shrieking with every step.

  I hardly even noticed my room as I walked in. It was exactly as it had been before the accident. But how much my life had changed in the last two months.

  I only had eyes for the letter.

  I stared and stared at the letter’s postmark and the date.

  She had sent it the morning after I’d last seen her; the morning after I had stormed from her flat in a jealous haze of hate.

  What I would have given to have taken it all back.

  The letter was thin. I could feel the trace of a card. My hands twitched as I slit open the envelope with a paperknife.

  This is what she had written.

  I’m sorry. I love you. Please forgive me.

  The card is in front of me now, though my tears over the years have made the ink fade and blur.

  I would never hear from
India again.

  BOOK 1

  PRELUDE 17,

  A-flat Major

  I AM NOT quite done.

  There are a few strings yet to be tied, though I am afraid none of this ends happily. No one especially gets their just desserts.

  I finished my final year at Eton and passed my A-levels without mishap. As for my Eton companions, I know next to nothing. Jeremy and I soldiered on. But when it came to our final parting, he never even said goodbye, just left and that was that. I have never seen or heard from him since.

  Angela, beautiful Angela, would still gaze at me in the English classes, but nothing ever came of it. We never kissed, we also never said goodbye, and, like Jeremy, I have not the faintest idea what happened to her.

  It was like we had all served a five-year stretch together in this gilded army camp. And, at the time, just like those poor benighted Argentinian conscripts in the Falklands, we had done the best we could, had made new friends. But once we’d left, we had come to see how those friendships had been forced on us, and that outside Eton it was possible to make companions of our own choosing.

  So, I’d like to hear from Jeremy, from Angela, from a few other of my unruly band of Scallies, but it’s never happened. It’s another era and another world, and it’s as if we have all made a silent pact never to return there.

  Frankie and my Dame, as far as I know, continued their Eton lives without a blip. They both must be close to retirement now.

  And Savage—what of him? I would so love to report that he had met some hideous end. But the truth is, like almost every one of my peers, I have not heard a word of Savage since he left Eton.

  As for me . . . well one thing was quite apparent after my accident—any career in the army was out of the question. My knee was finished, caput.

  But my injuries were merely the catalyst. For thanks to the Falklands, I’d already begun to realise that an army career was not for me.

  So instead of Sandhurst, I read English at Bristol University; Bristol, of course, because that was where India had been.

  I left university with an all too predictable 2:2 in English. That, by the by, is often the way with Etonians when they go to University. There’s no one driving them as hard, no tutors to give them a kick up the backside, no beaks shouting with incoherent rage. As a result, the boys suddenly realise that at university they can coast along quite nicely on just a bare minimum of work.