by Phillip Rock
“It is.”
“Any more about?”
Martin gestured toward a sideboard. “Any number of bottles over there.”
“Of course there are. I was a fool to ask. Gin’s the perfect sundown drink, wouldn’t you say? Sharpens the appetite for dinner.” He crossed to the sideboard, poured gin into a glass, and added a few drops of Angostura. He then leaned back against the heavy oak table and smiled at Martin. “You wouldn’t remember me, of course. Lord no, but I remember you. Nineteen fourteen … a few months before the war. A supper party to welcome you to England.”
“I remember,” Martin said.
“Perhaps, but not me. Most unlikely. One face in the crowd. The name’s Morton … David Morton, physician and surgeon. Sir David, blowin’ me own horn. County coroner and former M.P. for Crawley. Best slow bowler Surrey ever fielded in ‘eighty-eight. Captain of the eleven when his nibs and I were at school.”
“You’ve known Anthony that long?”
“Lord, yes. Same age to the month. ‘Course I look older. Only natural. Led a harder life.” He swirled the gin and bitters in his glass. “I’m a bloody good doctor in spite of playing cricket and going off to Parliament. Might have snagged a peerage if I hadn’t opposed the war so vocally. But did me duty, though, to put it mildly; cut, sew, and amputate for four bloody years as chief of surgery at Number Seven General Boulogne. Bellowed me rage every second of the time.” He fixed his hard, pale eyes on Martin’s face. “Still bellowing, if it comes to that. Past president of No More War International, Surrey and Sussex chapter, and represented all England at the Brussels conference two years ago. Your books are bibles to me.” He raised his glass. “So this is to you, for your arguments for sanity, past and future, and to your new book.”
“How did you know there’s a new book?”
The doctor swallowed his drink and set the glass on the table.
“I’m on Calthorpe and Crofts mailing list. An End to Castles, is that right? Due out in June. Half a crown. Sent my order in right away for a dozen copies, though I dare say I’ll be purchasing more than that. Pass ‘em out like ruddy pills.” He drew a silver watch from his waistcoat and scowled at it. “Must be off. Anthony and his angina have played havoc with my rounds.”
“Will he be all right?”
“Lord, yes. Tough as brass, that man. Went into a temporary emotional turmoil and his coronary arteries sent him a message to get his feet back on the ground. Always keep a level head, young man, and you’ll keep a steady heart.” He started for the door as Martin stood up. “Charles told the gaffer you were here. He’d like to see you. Slipped him a stiff sedative so he might not be too coherent. Gave her ladyship one as well and packed her off to bed.” He gripped Martin’s hand and shook it vigorously. “Damn glad to meet you again, Rilke. As we say in the movement—peace on earth!”
Charles was on the upper landing of the south wing, smoking a cigarette and gazing at the portrait of an ancestor on the wall.
“Which Greville is that?” Martin asked as he came up to him.
“The third earl—also a Charles. Chancellor of the exchequer in William and Mary’s time. Made a fortune out of the job, or so legend has it. I was trying to find a resemblance.”
“Same nose.”
“Weak chin—mean little eyes.”
“Well, all the good Chicago and Milwaukee blood changed that. Nothing like being half American to strengthen the face.”
“I daresay.” He took an awkward puff on the cigarette, not inhaling, and flicked ash on the carpet. “I had a few terrible moments today, Martin. Thought I might become the tenth earl.”
“Not much chance of that, if Dr. Morton is any judge.”
“I hope to God he’s right. He’s a first-rate man, but on the old-fashioned side. I’d like to get Father up to London … to Guy’s Hospital where they have a bit more in the way of equipment than a stethoscope and a pocket watch.”
“I’m sure you can arrange it without much trouble.”
Charles scowled and puffed furiously. “I thought you knew his nibs better than that. He’s lying in the bed he was born in and it would take death itself to get him out of it.”
“Perhaps I could put in a word on behalf of modern medical science.”
“I wish you would. He has a high respect for your opinions.” He buried the smoldering butt of his cigarette in the moist earth of a potted fern. “I have to get back to the school for a while, but perhaps we can have a few games of snooker later and crack a bottle or two.”
“Fine. I’d like that.”
“So would I.” He touched Martin awkwardly on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here. You always make things right, somehow.”
Martin grinned. “I just bumble through.”
“No.” His long, gentle face was solemn. “You have life by the throat. I truly envy you, Martin.”
He watched Charles walk away toward the stairs; tall, long-legged, dressed in baggy tweeds. His dark, curly hair had receded from the high dome of his forehead. He looked older than thirty-nine. Not the thinning hairline and the stooped shoulders, but an attitude, a middle-aged aura of weary acceptance.
There was an elderly nurse in the earl’s room and she rose from a chair as Martin entered, an admonishing finger pressed to her lips.
“He’s been given a sedative,” she whispered. “I really don’t think you—”
“I’m not asleep,” came a muffled voice from the bed. “Go downstairs and have your dinner.”
“I’m not to leave the room, Your Lordship. Doctor’s orders.”
“Damn the doctor. This is my house, Sister. Kindly do as you’re told.”
Martin whispered to her: “I’ll only be a few minutes. Why don’t you wait in the sitting room?”
Her face reflected her disapproval, but she left.
“Well, now,” Martin said as he drew a chair to the bedside. “What sort of nonsense have you been up to?”
The earl rolled over and drew himself up onto one elbow. “The old heart hit me for six this morning, Martin. It quite betrayed me.”
“Angina. Not as bad as all that.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Still, a heart is a heart. Charles would like to have you at Guy’s—for a complete checkup.”
“Would he? I don’t much like the idea. Bloody bunch of medicos pawing all over me and clucking their tongues. God alone knows what a group of bright young chaps might find abhorrent in a sixty-eight-year-old body. I won’t have it. I refuse to be a candidate for collective predissection.” His head slumped to the pillow. “Oh, Lord, they gave me something fizzy in a glass. I feel quite odd.”
“A sedative. To make you sleep.”
“Yes. A sedative. I sleep well. A few whiskies and a glass of port. Sleep like a log. No more of that, I suppose.”
“A whisky a day won’t do you any harm. Cut out the cigarettes, though.”
“Yes. That will please Hanna. Filthy habit anyway.” He struggled against sleep and managed to sit up. “Good of you to come, Martin. Pleased Hanna … and me. Oddest thing, old boy … truly the oddest thing. Ever happen to you?”
“What?”
“Rather like going to a moving-picture show. Everything so uncannily vivid … scenes … voices … Charlie down from Eton talking to Coatsworth in the pantry. And I was playing tennis on the lawn with Raymond Halliburton the summer Coatsworth arrived in a dogcart with all his luggage. Big man with muttonchop whiskers. Back straight as a gun. Hired him away from Lord Chelmsford. He soon set the house straight. Sacked half the servants for incompetence. Oh, I don’t know, Martin. Queer sort of day with the past crowding in on me like that. Do you ever recall events with such awful clarity?”
“There were times when I was obsessed by memory.”
“The war, you mean? Yes. Like Charlie counting the faces of the dead. Quite understandable though, isn’t it? I mean to say … memories of the Somme … Gallipoli. There was nothing ghastly in my thoughts
today. Only … how can I put it? A terrible sadness. Something lost, you see. That old man dead and so much dying with him.”
“I understand.”
“Knew you would … if anybody …”
“I’d get some sleep now.”
“Quite so … quite so.” He sank back to the pillows. “Very queer day indeed … but … all things … pass.”
2
MARTIN ATE DINNER alone in a room lined with oak paneling and carved stone, two servants in livery standing motionless behind him against the wall. He poked at the superbly roasted beef and drank a red Burgundy, Hospices de Beaune, 1921, and, for some reason, felt immeasurably depressed. When the servants brought coffee, cognac, and cigars, the tall, diamond-paned windows began to rattle as a wind-borne rain slashed against them.
“Looks like the weather’s changed for the worst,” he said, as much to hear a human voice as for any other reason.
“Indeed it does, sir,” one of the servants replied—and left the room.
He followed the ritual of preparing and lighting a fine Cuban panatella, sipped cognac, and blew smoke down the table, watching it drift past the empty chairs. He had just finished his first glass when the door opened and Charles came into the room, rubbing his hands and scowling.
“Christ! It’s blowing a gale. The side curtains on the car don’t fit and I was damn near soaked.”
“Side curtains on a Rolls?”
“My car, old chap—a rustic Austin.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Yes. School grub.”
“Messing with the inmates, eh?”
“We try to eat together as often as possible. Makes for a family atmosphere.”
“How is it?”
“The finest school meals in England—which isn’t exactly saying much. But we try our best. A bit heavy on lamb stew and shepherd’s pie.” He took a glass from the sideboard and poured himself a stiff brandy. “Care for a game?”
They took the decanter into the billiard room and Charles racked the balls in a desultory fashion, his mind not on the task.
“Did you have a good talk with Father?”
Martin chalked his stick. “Short. The sedative was taking effect. He balked at the idea of going to a hospital, but I think he can be persuaded.”
“I hope so. Was he still dwelling on the past?”
“Yes.”
Charles frowned and rolled the cue ball from hand to hand. “That was all he talked about with me. He felt certain he was following Coatsworth to the grave and a lot of his disappointments in life came pouring out. His bitterness is a better word, perhaps. The world that used to be. Regrets for an altered landscape—and altered lives. Mine in particular, probably—although he left that unsaid.”
“You turned out okay.”
“I daresay he’s thankful that I survived, but, still … a schoolmaster …” He rolled the white ivory ball to the end of the table. “Care to break?”
“All right.” He sighted along his stick. “Warped—this stick and your views. Is that all you think he is, thankful? You’re proof to him that miracles exist. You should have been fifty times dead … or still hidden away in Wales with the shell-shocked and the basket cases. You’re a lucky man, Charles, so please keep the undertone of self-pity out of the conversation.”
“Sorry. This has been a crisis to warp anyone’s viewpoint. Father’s not the only one who’s been dwelling in the past. My entire life passed in formal review. Charles Greville marching toward forty—though slinking would be the more apt term … and if that be self-pity, make the most of it.”
Martin laughed and placed his stick back in the wall rack.
“The colly-wobbles of middle age. I know all the signs.”
“You? Nonsense. Height of your powers. Premier news wallah. The world’s your oyster. I’m curled up in the bloody shell.”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?”
“Not usually. I’ve been content the past few years. But it’s a day for questioning, isn’t it? Death hovers and thoughts soar. The things one did not do seem to loom with exaggerated regret.”
Martin turned to the table where the decanter rested and refilled the glasses.
“Why don’t we forget snooker and get pie-eyed?”
Brandy became heavy on the tongue and Charles sent the butler for a couple of bottles of Pommery. The champagne, pleasantly iced, had a sobering effect on Martin, clearing his head while imparting a mellow glow. It seemed the perfect drink to have while seated in front of a fire while rain slapped against the windowpanes and wind moaned across the chimney opening far above. Charles, who rarely drank more than a sherry before dinner and a glass of port afterward, began to feel the effects. He slouched in his chair, legs stretched out toward the fire, staring at the flames.
“Roger couldn’t drink. You remember Roger Wood-Lacy, don’t you?”
“Of course,” Martin said.
“Couldn’t drink at all. One drop of alcohol made him ill. I recall a night at Cambridge … May Week. Roger and I … and two girls whose names I can’t remember … in a boat on the river, Japanese lanterns swaying in Rectory Meadows. I possessed a small silver flask filled with cherry brandy. Roger took a sip and the girls had to paddle us ashore while I tried to keep his face out of the water.” He drained his glass and refilled it. “Couldn’t keep his face out of the water at Sedd el Bahr, I’m afraid.”
“I wouldn’t think about that,” Martin said quietly.
“I think about it, but never dwell upon it. V Beach and Gallipoli seem a thousand years in the past. So does Contalmaison and Delville Wood. Even the Royal Windsor Fusiliers have disappeared from the army list, done in by the budget. All flags cased. All dead noted and filed away—but difficult to forget. Although I do try, Martin. Try very hard. I suppose that’s the main reason I like Burgate. There’s something womblike about being a schoolmaster. A safe haven.”
“There’s a difference between a safe haven and a hideout.”
“A point well made. Let’s just say that I’m aware of it.”
“Ever start that book on your English civil war?”
Charles held his glass to the light and squinted at the stream of rising bubbles. “The two-volume history? Actually, no. Although I did write an article which was published in the Guildford Gazette. Some ass felt there should be a monument raised to commemorate the Battle of Abingdon. I pointed out that there had been merely a skirmish here, in what is now our orchard, between a Roundhead patrol and a troop of Prince Rupert’s horse. July, sixteen forty-two. A brave encounter but hardly worthy of a sixty-loot granite column supporting a bronze Cavalier. I squelched that ludicrous plan quickly enough, so my writing is not without worth.”
“Everything you do has worth. They’ve even heard of Burgate House back in the States. A sterling example of the progressive-school movement, the New York Sun called it.”
“Did they? Nothing quite so grand here, let me tell you. Radical and Bolshevik are the terms most used to describe us. A nest of little wild-eyed anarchists festering amid the Surrey hills!” He popped the cork of the second bottle. “Not that I pay much attention to critics. It’s results that count. Our bunch may not conform to the public-school mold, no ‘old boys’ or school ties, but we do turn out children who can think for themselves, are self-reliant and emotionally solid.”
He drained his glass. “You should see the state of some of those kids when we first get them. Out-of-control little savages … or beaten down into a stupor. Just flailing about, trying to make some sense out of their lives. Not unlike myself when the Mastwicks took me on as a teacher. Groping for something solid to cling to.” He refilled Martin’s glass and his own. “I have been very … content there, Martin. I know Father would have preferred I … well, why go into that? Not important, is it?”
“No.”
“A good life, really. Productive and challenging. I’ve been … happy. All things … considered.”
It was the s
econd bottle of champagne that finished Charles. He struggled to stay awake and required Martin’s help to get up the stairs to his room. His room, kept intact by Hanna for the rare times that he slept in it. The walls were lined with bookcases—books of his childhood, books from Eton and Cambridge. A tennis racket on the wall. A cricket bat. Amber-tinted photographs of boys in straw skimmers with a background of willows and the river at Windsor. An Edwardian room preserved. Martin made sure that Charles got into the bed and not under it and then turned out the light.
Hanna maintained special rooms for special people in the forty-bedroom house. There were rooms for her children. Charles’s room, William’s and Alexandra’s. William lived on his horse farm in Derbyshire when he wasn’t on the racing circuit. Alexandra lived in La Jolla, California. The rooms stood waiting, dusted and polished. There was a room for Martin, although he might not use it from one year to the next. Hanna’s idea of sentimentality in giving it to him. The room he had stayed in when first coming to England in June 1914. And Ivy Thaxton had brought a vase of flowers and set it on a table. Slender and dark haired. Uptilted nose and violet eyes. Her maid’s uniform so heavily starched she rustled when she walked. Seventeen years old and as lovely as summer twilight.
Christ!
He wasn’t a champagne drinker, and God knows he wasn’t a cognac-and-champagne drinker, and he was feeling the effects of the mixture. He removed his shoes, curled up on the bed, and drew the eiderdown comforter around him. The lamp still burned but he lacked the energy to get up and turn it off. The wind was dying and the rain had stopped. Water dripped from the trees outside the window, plip-plopping to the ground as melancholy as tears.
BRIGADIER FENTON WOOD-LACY had bitter thoughts.
“Twenty-two years in service to king and country is time enough for any man.”
Major General Sir John Towerside had made that observation with pointed casualness at first light, over tea and biscuits at the conclusion of a night exercise on Salisbury Plain. “Long and fruitful years, Hawk,” the general had continued. “If I were you, I’d pack it in now while you’re still a young man, take a directorship with Vickers.”
