Closed Circle

by Robert Goddard

  ‘You’re … still going, then?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘No reason, I suppose. But … what will you say … to Diana?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I … I don’t …’ He gazed pleadingly up at me. ‘I can’t pay you now, of course, but … why inflict the truth on her? Why not tell her what we agreed? You’re never going to see her again. Whereas Vita and me … There’s no sense muddying the water, is there?’

  ‘We agreed nothing. You dictated terms. Those terms no longer apply. As to what I’ll tell Diana …’ I stood by the door, looking down at him. ‘I haven’t made up my mind. You and Vita can while away your days aboard the Olympic wondering what I’ve said. I hope the uncertainty agrees with you.’ I turned to go, then pulled up. There was one last thing that needed saying, one final condemnation he did not deserve to be spared. ‘Do you know the worst of it, Quincy? I think your plan might have worked. I think we might actually have got away with it. But you threw the chance away. And it’ll never come again. Cheating me was no big deal. But you managed to betray – how many did you say it was? – more than a hundred thousand Americans. Mull that over back in Pittsburgh. Remember it, whenever you’re tempted to tell brother Theo what to do with his job. Because you won’t tell him. You’ll never tell him. Vasaritch was right. There is cowardice in your eyes. And it’ll always be there.’

  18

  I STOOD ON the boat deck as the Leviathan backed slowly out of Ocean Dock and turned to head down Southampton Water. The sky was one low unbroken dome of grey, the sea dark and oily, the gulls strangely silent as they swooped and hovered in the fitful breeze. The vast ship was more than three quarters empty according to the purser, but seemed wholly so to me, desolate and despairing as the tugs nudged it on its way. There were no fanfares, no crowds, no streamers. This was a chill and furtive leave-taking, late November in spirit as well as fact.

  Worse lay in wait along the Itchen Quays, sliding into view as we passed the mouth of the river. The Empress of Britain was in port, pale as a remembered ghost, solid as the rails I leant against. Summer was long gone. And so was the friend I had stood beside half a world and four months away.

  ‘Well, that tears it, doesn’t it?’ he seemed to say once more.

  ‘We knew it was coming,’ I murmured in reply. ‘Or, rather, we should have known.’

  My mood had not changed since leaving Quincy’s suite at the South Western. It had merely intensified. I was free and I was alive. It should have been enough to make a man like me happy, let alone content. But I had held history in my hands and seen it snatched away. I had been tempted by a fleeting touch of God-like power. Comfort and wealth seemed now the pettiest of ambitions. It would not last. I knew that. Guy Horton would soon be reclaimed by his true self. But, for the moment, he felt the loneliest man in the world. On the emptiest ship. And the widest sea.

  Waiting below, in her cabin, was Diana. We had met for the first time sailing towards this port. We would meet for the last sailing away from it. The circle was very nearly closed. But what would seal its circumference? The truth? Or yet more of the lies we had chased around its rim? I paced the deck, smoking one cigarette after another, waiting for the last of England to fade greyly astern, waiting till a choice had to be made – or offered. A truth for a truth. Or a lie for a lie. In the end, as we passed the Nab Tower and headed out into the Channel, I realized only she could decide.

  Was she really there? I wondered, as I stood at the door of her cabin and raised my hand to knock. Perhaps I would have preferred her not to be, would have been grateful to find she had seen through Quincy’s ploy and slipped ashore at the last moment. But she had not. Before my knuckles could touch the door a second time, she opened it.

  There were no words at first. A nod, a flicker of the eyes, a quiver of the lips. Then she stepped back and I entered. She was wearing the black suit I had last seen as I drove away from Amber Court after the inquest. False mourning had met secret grief. One pretence had begotten another. She would want to know who had killed him. She would want to understand. But could I allow her to?

  ‘You haven’t brought the records with you?’ she asked, frowning at me.

  ‘No. I … We have to be careful.’ I looked away. ‘Did Quincy tell you what happened in Phoenix Park?’

  ‘Yes. But not why you met Papa alone. Nor why you left me to … learn of his death as I did.’

  ‘I went alone because your father insisted I should. And I didn’t come back for you afterwards because Faraday said you were acting as his agent.’

  ‘He was lying.’

  ‘Yes. I realize that now.’

  ‘And how did Papa know you were in Dublin in the first place?’

  ‘I … I’m not sure.’ Her frown deepened. ‘Perhaps he kept watch on the Shelbourne. Perhaps …’ Irritated by the inadequacy of my words, I whipped out the letter and handed it to her. ‘He asked me to give you this. I’m sorry it’s so … It couldn’t be helped.’

  She sank down onto a chair and flattened the letter out on her lap. For as long as it took her to read her father’s message, she was oblivious to my existence. I moved to the plate-glass window and peered out towards the grey horizon. Minutes passed. Then some awareness – fainter than any specific movement – told me she had finished. I turned round to find her looking straight at me. ‘You’ve read this?’ she said, her eyes narrowing as incredulity gave way to suspicion.

  ‘Yes. I have.’

  ‘There’s no money left?’

  ‘None at all, it seems.’

  ‘But …’ She stared down at the letter. ‘Why?’

  ‘You know why, Diana. You just don’t want to believe it.’

  ‘That’s not true. I—’ Her gaze swung back to me. ‘Tell me now. Who betrayed him? How did they know he was in Dublin?’

  ‘Tell me something first. Answer the question your father poses in his letter. Did you mean to kill Max?’

  ‘Of course not. I’ve—’

  ‘Don’t toss a thoughtless lie at me,’ I shouted, growing suddenly angry. ‘Think what you’re saying. Did you set out to kill him?’

  ‘It seems you believe I did, Guy. So, what difference does it make what I say?’

  ‘The difference is that I want to know the truth.’

  ‘I’ve already told you the truth.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Several times. I’m just not sure you were listening.’

  ‘What does that mean? Yes or no?’

  ‘It means I’m tired of defending my past actions.’ She flushed. ‘Especially to you.’

  ‘Yes or no?’

  She stood up, dropping the letter onto a table beside the chair, and ran her hand down over her hip. Her eyes met mine, then moved away, then met them again. There was no answer. There never would be. She was breathing rapidly as her mind raced to outwit me. But it was racing in the wrong direction. ‘Where are the records?’ she asked abruptly. ‘I have a right to see them.’ And so the issue was decided. It was to be a lie for a lie. I silently wished her well of the fraudulent future she had chosen. ‘I want to see them now.’

  ‘But some things you want you can’t have.’ I smiled. ‘I sold the records to Faraday. They’re gone. Lost for ever. Like your father’s money.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I sold them. I struck a deal. I turned a profit. Well, there was none to be made out of honouring our bargain, was there? As soon as I read the letter, I realized that. It’s why I screwed it up in disgust. I had to look elsewhere, Diana. Surely you can see I had to.’ A strange sense of satisfaction flooded over me as I embroidered the lie. Why should I not let her hate me and trust Quincy? She had deceived Max often and completely enough to deserve this. She had forfeited her right to the truth. And mine with it. ‘I did what you should have expected me to do. I named my price. And Faraday paid it.’

  ‘My father laid down his life to help you escape with those records,’ she said slowly. ‘And yo
u simply sold them.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘I see.’ She moved uncertainly to the bedroom doorway and leant back against the frame, keeping her eyes fixed upon me. ‘I see it all. Now.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘You betrayed him, didn’t you? You led them to him.’

  ‘Maybe.’ I shrugged, happy to let her invent part of the fiction herself. ‘I didn’t owe your father anything.’

  ‘And they paid better, of course. Better than he or I could.’

  ‘Exactly. Money outlasts truth and beauty. It grows, while they fade.’

  ‘Bastard,’ she murmured.

  ‘Call me what you like. But you can’t call me a murderer, can you? You can’t call me anything worse than you already are.’

  ‘You killed him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘Answer me.’

  ‘No. I won’t.’ I shook my head and smiled. ‘I’m tired of defending my past actions. Especially to you.’

  Suddenly, spurred by the echo of her own words, she lunged into the bedroom and out of my sight. I reached the doorway just in time to see her bending over her clutch bag where it lay on the bedside cabinet. Then she whirled round to face me, raising the derringer in her right hand as she did so. I had forgotten about it amidst the press of events. But Diana had not. And she was pointing it straight at me.

  ‘No! For God’s sake! I was ly—’

  She squeezed the trigger, her expression fixed and determined. But there was only a click. And, as she squeezed again, only another. She glanced down at the barrel and grimaced in rage. I could see her thinking what I too was thinking. Quincy or Vita had discovered the gun and removed the bullets. No doubt they had acted to save her from herself. But they had only succeeded in saving me.

  I walked slowly across the room, prised the gun from her grasp and slipped it into the pocket of my jacket. She was breathing even more rapidly than me, shocked, it seemed, by her misjudgement, bewildered by two things her life had left her ill-prepared to meet: failure and frustration. ‘That was lucky,’ I said, as calmly as I could. ‘For both of us.’

  ‘Get out of here,’ she said, in a subdued but imperious tone.

  ‘Gladly.’

  ‘And stay away from me for the rest of the voyage.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m jumping ship at Cherbourg. You’ll soon be rid of me. For good.’

  She looked at me for the first time since trying to kill me. The fit had passed. The wish was no longer strong enough to act on. But the hatred remained, mingling with the first stirrings of something much less simple. ‘Just now,’ she said slowly, ‘you were going to tell me you’d been lying, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But that wouldn’t have been true, would it?’

  ‘Of course not.’ She wanted to believe me. She needed to believe me. But there was doubt in her eyes, a faint suspicion that I had somehow misled her. And a creeping realization that she would never know for certain. ‘How could it have been?’

  She broke away and moved to the window, clasped her hands together in front of her and stared fixedly out. I could tell by the very set of her shoulders that she meant to do so for as long as I remained, that she would not look round until she was sure I had gone. This was the end between us. Neither of us had won. But neither of us had admitted defeat. Other than to ourselves.

  ‘What else,’ I added, as I turned towards the door, ‘could you possibly imagine?’

  I went back on deck and tossed the derringer over the aft rail into the foaming wake. Then I took several slow circuits of the deserted promenade, wishing the journey was already over and Diana and I had more than doors and companion-ways between us.

  Confident though I was that she would not leave her cabin until I had disembarked, I decided to take refuge in the male preserve of the smoking-room, commanding as its wide windows did a view of the bow – and hence of Cherbourg, as soon as it came in sight. I had the room to myself at first and, though the cocktail list offered in deference to the Volstead Act only such delicacies as sarsaparilla and lemon soda, the steward supplied Manhattans as strong and frequently as I required.

  I had just started the third of these when a tubby and ominously amiable American flopped into the chair beside me. ‘A fellow-passenger,’ he proclaimed. ‘You’re a rare and welcome sight, sir. I’ve been rattling round that lounge they call a social hall downstairs like a pea in a drum.’

  ‘Have you really?’

  ‘I have. And social isn’t the word for it.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘You’re British, right?’ He squinted at me.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied cautiously.

  ‘And well educated by the sound of it. The Classics. Greek Mythology. All that stuff.’

  ‘Well … I suppose …’

  ‘You may be able to help me, then. I was looking at the paintings round the wall of the un-social hall.’ He laughed and waited in vain for me to join in, then continued undaunted. ‘Four of them. Depicting the Pandora story, so I was told. You know? Pandora’s Box.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Well, what I was wondering was—’ He broke off at the approach of the steward and went up in my estimation by demanding a large Jack Daniels. ‘What I was wondering was this. She got curious and opened the box, right?’

  ‘More or less.’ Like Charnwood, I suddenly thought. Simple curiosity was what had made him do it. The wish to know what lay beneath the lid of the jar labelled war.

  ‘And out flew … everything bad in the world?’

  ‘All the Spites of mankind, yes. Old age. Illness. Insanity. Lust. Greed. Jealousy. And the rest.’

  ‘Which mankind had been free of till then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So … what would have happened … if she hadn’t?’

  ‘Hadn’t released them?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Well, we wouldn’t be plagued by them, would we?’

  ‘We wouldn’t know what it’s like to be those things you said? Old, sick, mad, greedy and so forth?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Life would be … perfect?’

  ‘Yes. Except …’ Suddenly, it came to me. Charnwood had seen the world standing on the brink of war and had pushed it over. But, if he had stayed his hand, the world would not have retreated from the brink. In the end, it would still have fallen. ‘Except,’ I resumed, ‘that, if Pandora hadn’t opened the box, somebody else would have.’

  ‘There was never any hope it could remain sealed for ever?’

  ‘Not really.’ I smiled, reflecting on the inadvertent irony of his words. ‘You see, Hope was one of the Spites imprisoned in the box.’

  My companion frowned. ‘Why did Hope have to be shut away?’

  ‘Because it always lied. And, true to form, after its release, it deceived mankind into believing the other Spites could be overcome. They couldn’t, of course, but thinking they could at least made them seem bearable.’

  ‘So Hope did some good after all?’

  ‘I suppose it did.’ As the steward returned, I gazed past him at the featureless sky beyond the window. It was as grey and wide and empty as my future seemed. And yet … ‘I suppose we prove the point, we sorely afflicted but stubbornly optimistic mortals.’

  ‘We do?’

  ‘Well, even when the worst happens … we continue to hope for the best.’

  ‘I’ll certainly drink to that.’ He smiled and raised his glass, inviting me to share his toast. Which I did. More in hope, of course, than expectation.

  Four hours later, I was standing in the stern of the Cherbourg tender as it pulled away from the Leviathan. The liner’s vast black flank soared above me in the night, its porthole-lights watching my departure like a hundred unblinking eyes. Was Diana standing in one of those glimmering circles of gold, I wondered, looking down as I left? I could not tell. Nor could she, if she were, discern one muffled figure looking up from the puny craft that bore him away
. What either of us felt or saw or believed was as obscure to the other as the day we met. And it was too late now for it ever to be otherwise. I would board the next train to Paris, while she carried on to New York. And the tangents of our separate destinies would diverge at an ever greater pace. Never to meet again.

  Epilogue

  The weeks that followed my flight from England were nomadic and aimless, while the truth they revealed was as unwelcome as it was predictable. My long partnership with Max – and our cosy arrangement with the Babcocks – had sapped my appetite for the self-sufficient life of the wandering con-man. My instincts were sound, but my reactions were suspect. Loneliness and fallibility nibbled at my nerves. My finances dwindled. My prospects deteriorated. My confidence declined.

  Then memory began to exert a power over me it never had before, drawing me back to Venice, to an empty villa on the Lido and a neglected grave on the Isola di San Michele. The turn of the year found me lingering in the fog-shrouded city, riding the vaporetti by day and trying my failing luck in the Casino by night. I knew I should leave, but I had nowhere to go. And to desert Max in death seemed somehow more difficult than to betray him in life.

  It was in the middle of January that my sojourn in Venice was transformed by an encounter at the Casino with Francesco Contanari, wealthy dealer in Byzantine antiquities. He was, of course, no more a scion of Venetian nobility than I was a gentleman of independent means. When the pretence and artifice were stripped away, we were beasts of the same stripe: Francesco’s antiquities were as inauthentic as his blood-line. He was eager to recruit an assistant, to collect his objets d’art ancien from their place of dubious manufacture in Istanbul and to pose as a knowledgeable collector whenever a client needed the spur of a rival bid to turn his interest in a thirteenth-century icon into an offer of hard cash. I was equally eager to be recruited. And so began an association which, if it did not banish my regrets, at least paid off my debts.

  It was not, however, destined to be as long as it was lucrative. A telegram from Francesco’s mistress-cum-secretary – whose charms I had myself on one occasion failed to resist – reached me in Istanbul at the end of April, warning me that Francesco had been arrested in Rome, after selling a scabbard supposedly worn by Emperor Andronicus Comnenus to a personal friend of Mussolini; I was on no account to return to Venice.