I found myself running out through the gate to the road. I could see the car, a dark shape heading down the hill towards Gaula. Scattered rhododendron blossom was still circling in its wake by the verge. She’d gone. But I could follow – if I wished.
When I returned, I came up here to Strafford’s study, to read his Memoir again in the place where it was written, to look at Elizabeth’s photograph on the desk where it has always stood, to gaze from the window down the valley towards the sea, as all those who have lived here have done.
Evening is settling over the Quinta. The cicadas are out, scratching away at the blurred edges of the twilight. Doubt is muffled by the onset of night, decision delayed at least until another day.
Yes, she has re-entered my olden haunts. Through the years, the dead scenes, she has tracked me, and now, at last, I know why. What has she found to say of our past? Only the promise, only the vague, bewitching echo of a dream, held out across the dark space wherein I have lacked her. So near at hand, so far from my thoughts until now … “I’ll be at Valladolid until the end of June.” In the months that stretch remorselessly ahead, her invitation will become harder and harder to forget. Acceptance will creep upon me in every unguarded, fatalistic moment. I know it as surely as I know my own weaknesses, as surely as she knows them.
Strafford’s face in that gathering of Asquith’s Cabinet: I see you, my elusive quarry, but I do not hear you. If you had told me what to expect from a quest after your past, I would never have embarked upon it. But you know that. Your shade, which I tracked and moved in, envelops me now in this place of your displaced being.
What would you do? I know – there is no need to say. But first, I must close the book, Strafford, yours and mine, and, with it, the timeless circle of our acquaintance. Outside, the shadows beckon. To walk into them must always be a choice of random futures. What would you do? I know – there is no need to say. It is now for me to decide.
About the Author
This remarkable first novel from Robert Goddard is compulsive reading. With echoes of John Fowles’ The Magus, the compelling narrative style and labyrinthine plot make Past Caring an extraordinary achievement.
Martin Radford, history graduate, disaffected and unemployed, jumps at the chance to visit Madeira at the invitation of an old university friend who is running the local English language newspaper. Luck continues to run for him when he is offered a lucrative commission to research the mysterious resignation and subsequent obscure retirement on Madeira of Edwardian Cabinet minister Edwin Strafford. However, his investigation triggers a bizarre and inevitably violent train of events which remorselessly entangles him and those who believed they had escaped the spectre of crimes long past but never paid for.
By the Same Author
In Pale Battalions
Painting the Darkness
Into the Blue
Take No Farewell
Hand in Glove
Closed Circle
Copyright
To Vaunda
© Robert Goddard 1986
First published in Great Britain 1986
This ebook edition 2011
ISBN 978 0 7090 9340 4
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of Robert Goddard to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Past Caring Page 57
