I said, “Adam, whatever else went wrong between us, you must know that I owe just about everything I’ve achieved to you and Hal. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I came – to try and get the two of you back together again.”
Out of the uncertain silence down the line Adam said, “Marina tells me he’s in rather a bad way.”
“He’s had a second stroke. He’s lost the use of his right side, and his speech is barely comprehensible. But he very much wants to see you.”
“Is he in hospital?”
“He was, but there wasn’t much they could do for him, and they needed the bed.”
“So who’s looking after him?”
“Marjorie Cockroft. Do you remember her?”
“Vaguely. Big woman? Lived down in Sugden Foot?”
“That’s her. And the District Nurse comes in to help. The point is, he wants to see you. Both of you.”
After a further pause I said, “Adam, I don’t know how long he’s got.”
“It’s that bad?”
“Well, he’s seventy-nine now… And with nothing much else left to live for. Not after everything that matters to him has gone so desperately wrong.” I picked up the glass, took a sip. “I think it’s only the chance of seeing you two again that’s keeping him alive.”
I heard Adam draw in his breath. “Marina’s thinking of going.”
“You wouldn’t let her travel alone?”
“Allegra will probably go with her.”
“That’s good. But what about you? He wants to see you too.”
“I haven’t made up my mind.”
“Surely you can forgive him after all these years?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. But that’s not it.”
“Then what?”
When Adam’s answer came, its coldness chilled me. “There are other calls on me.”
“Oh, right, yes,” I said in a voice still colder than his own, “I was forgetting that you seem to have become an important player in the snake-oil trade.”
“Shall we not quarrel?” Adam said quietly after another pause. “I’d made up my mind not to lose my temper with you. I don’t think either of us needs that now.”
“Yes, let’s not,” I said. “I’m sorry I said that. But the fact is I’m having a hard time understanding what you’re about these days. Marina’s probably told you – I’ve just got back from Equatoria. I can’t square what’s happening there with the kind of life you seem to be living here.”
“But then you don’t really know what I’m doing, do you?”
“Just enough to worry me. So tell me: what is The Heartsease Foundation?”
“How do you know about that?”
“I read a note left for Sam and Jago in the cottage.”
After several moments Adam took a decision. “Heartsease is an American philanthropic foundation. We’re affiliated to it here.”
“And it does what exactly?”
“Look, I don’t really want to get into that right now, but its thinking is quite radical, believe me – particularly its interest in the way changes come about.”
“Which could mean anything,” I said. “So, all this mumbo-jumbo about the sibyls and astrology and the goddess Isis – what’s that about?” When he didn’t answer at once I said, “What the hell are you doing with your life, Adam? There was a time when you were as serious as anyone I know about what’s going on in the real world. You’d have had no time for all this irrational claptrap.”
He sighed at the edge of sarcasm in my voice. “Let’s not talk about this over the phone,” he said. “We have to talk properly or not at all.”
“Sure.”
“All right,” he said. “I’m tied up all weekend, at least till Sunday evening. Can you wait until then?”
“Sunday evening! You expect me to sit on my hands for all that time while you and your friends play mystical charades and your father might be dying?”
Adam’s response, when it came, took me by surprise. “Marina tells me that you had a dream on the way here – a dream in which you were dragging your father’s corpse along with you. Is that right?”’
“Yes, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“Just that it seems I’m not the only one being summoned by his father.”
Disconcerted I said, “I wouldn’t put it quite that way.”
“Why not?”
“Well for a start, Hal isn’t summoning you – he’s asking you to come. And then your father’s still alive, remember. Mine has been dead for a long time.”
As if such considerations were of no consequence, Adam said in a calm and deliberate tone, “I think that you and your father need to talk.
Snorting again, I said, “I think you’ve just stolen my big line. In my world the living have more pressing claims than the dead. In fact, I can’t quite believe we’re having this conversation. This isn’t about me anyway. It’s about you, Adam, and whether or not you can bring yourself to care enough for your father to go back and see him.”
“It seems it’s about both of us,” he replied. “It looks like we’re in this together, just as we always have been. In fact I’m beginning to wonder whether we shouldn’t strike a deal, you and me.”
“What kind of deal?”
“A straight exchange. I’ll talk to my father if you’ll talk to yours.”
I thought about that for a moment and decided to humour him. “Well, if it’s the only way I can get you to go back to High Sugden…”
“We’re agreed then?”
“Agreed. But I’ve no idea how I’d keep my end of the deal.”
“Don’t worry about that. I have. You can sleep at the cottage tonight, but it’s needed for the next few days, so you’ll have to move out in the morning. I’ll speak to Fra Pietro and ask him if you can stay in the visitor’s cell at the convento. It’s the ideal place for you to prepare. You need a period of fasting and silent meditation. You need to reflect on your past – about your father and what he means for you. You might even try to write something about it – that would be good. But try to sidestep your ego. Go for some deep subjectivity.”
“Sure,” I said, “we journalists are famous for it.”
“And I’ve just had another thought. While you’re in the convento I’ll ask Fra Pietro to tell you a story he told me – the one that finally provided me with some sort of answer to Dog Fox. It’s a story about a different kind of proxy.”
Again I went along with him. “That sounds interesting. But I’m wondering what happens after that?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s the kind of thing that can’t be told – only experienced.”
“I see. So I get left on my own for three days with nothing to eat in preparation for some experience you’re not prepared to talk about. Right?”
“That’s about right.”
“You can’t seriously think I’m going through with this?”
“I thought we had a deal.”
“In honest deals you get to read the small print first.”
“This isn’t a contractual arrangement. You’re asking something of me; I’m proposing something in return – something you’re at perfect liberty to refuse.”
“Let’s be straight with one another for a minute,” I said. “As I recall, you were so full of hatred for me the last time we met that you could hardly bear to look at me. That’s true, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“So how do I know I can trust you now?”
“You don’t.”
“Then why should I go along with what you have in mind?”
“Nobody’s forcing you to go along with it. As I just said, you’re free to choose. We can leave it here if you like. In fact it might be for the best. It’s your decision.”
But even as he spoke I realized that I wasn’t thinking about him at all. Nor about my dead father. I was thinking about Marina, and where
she might be in all of this. “If I stay,” I asked, “what will you be up to for the next three days?”
“I can’t talk to you about that. Not now. Perhaps never. We’ll have to see what happens afterwards – if you stay, that is.” After a pause he added, “I hope you do. I think Marina hopes so too.”
And in that moment, whatever my doubts and reservations, I knew that what had happened between us in the past could be kept from the present no longer, and that the deal was already done.
15
Hal
The past is retrievable only through an act of the imagination. What survives is what we are able to make of it, and I should admit that the account of the early years of my involvement with the Brigshaw family is my own disputable version of those events – a stab at autobiographical fiction written long before my errand to Umbria. Even as I was writing it I understood well enough why that account dried up where it did, and why Hal had played only a shadowy role in its pages. But it’s time to bring him out of the shadows now.
Hal Brigshaw then – six foot four inches tall, a big man with big ideas, and a habit, when under pressure, or when trying to articulate some difficult thought, of interlacing the fingers of his hands, raising them at full stretch above his head, and then lowering them slowly to his crown, as though compressing all the available oxygen inside his brain.
I was watching him do that on the night when he took me to see the belly dancers in the nightclub in Port Rokesby. I should have realized that the gesture betrayed more anxiety than his words disclosed. But I was infatuated by the glamour of this new country and ignorant of the reason why Hal had been called away to the meeting of the Inner Cabinet on the night of our arrival. I was young in those days, and idealistic. I didn’t know that the government kept a network of informers in place, and I would have found it hard to believe that the author of The Practice of Freedom was contemplating the need for a Preventive Detention Act that would cause more unrest in the nation he had helped to found than its tentative grasp on liberty could sustain. Not until later did I learn that Ambrose Fouda and his allies were already in covert negotiations with executives of the Anglo-Equatorial Mining Corporation and certain figures ostensibly attached to the US Trade mission in Port Rokesby, and that they were laying the groundwork for a coup d’état. Only then did I understand why Hal saw the necessity for such summary abrogation of their civil liberties.
Since our first encounter at High Sugden, I had always been in awe of Hal as a libertarian thinker and political philosopher. Now he impressed me as a man of action too, one entirely prepared to take whatever measures might be required to protect the stability of Emmanuel’s regime. Not that this should have surprised me, because Hal’s war record in both the Desert Campaign and the invasion of Italy had proved him capable of acts of extreme courage. I’d once heard Marina ask him just how many people he thought he had killed. “Enough,” he had answered her curtly, “to do my bit in ensuring that you and your chums can enjoy the democratic freedoms which you choose to abuse in such trivial ways.”
My admiration for him grew. So did my gratitude that so forceful a man should take the trouble to further my education and career. After all, the attitudes and opinions I first brought with me to High Sugden were entirely opposed in spirit to Hal’s rational vision of the world. At that time I was often discomfited by his brusque way of sharpening my thinking against the steel of his own uncompromising mind, but it was clear from our first exchanges that Hal was on my side. At least, that was my positive reading of the interest he took in me, though there would be occasions when I wondered whether I had merely chanced along at the right time to be caught up in the strength of his gravitational field as somany other people were, and not always to their advantage. Perhaps I was just luckier than the rest of them, or perhaps his affection for me was genuine from the start? Whatever the case, Hal took me on board, licked me into shape and found ways to make use of me. And because it flattered me to be closely associated with such an impressive figure, I was ready to be used. Even to be used against Adam.
And maybe that was the real reason why I feared Hal as well as admiring him – not because of what he might do to me, but because of what, in an effort to secure his good opinion, I might do to myself.
That concern was already evident when I spoke to Efwa Nkansa at Hal’s request. I liked Efwa a lot. She was quick to laugh and eager to please. Her face shone bright with African optimism, and because her attachment to Adam did not preclude a shrewd awareness of her own interests, she proved easy to suborn. Listening to her chatter, I remembered how dismissively Adam had spoken about the falsity of life in Cambridge and saw how Efwa’s lack of interest in the life of the mind must have appealed to him as much as her spontaneous warmth and the casual grace with which her body moved. Because she was a woman who nursed no pretensions, Efwa knew where her true strengths lay and how to make the best of them. Like most men, I found it hard to resist her charm.
It quickly emerged that Efwa had ambitions of her own and that she was planning to set up home in the UK with Adam as soon as possible rather than remain in Equatoria for the rest of her life. “I think maybe we will live in London,” she declared.
“London’s very expensive,” I said. “And the trouble is, Adam could have a hard time getting a well-paid job if he doesn’t finish his degree.”
“His father will help him,” Efwa responded cheerfully. “He is an important man.”
“In Equatoria he is – but not in the UK. Hal doesn’t have much influence there. That’s why he thinks Adam should go back to Cambridge.” For the first time I saw her face fall. “Of course,” I reassured her, “once he’s completed his degree, he’ll be able to take his pick among any number of good jobs.”
“Then, when we go to UK,” she said, “he must certainly do that thing.”
“I’m sure you’re right. But as a student he won’t have very much money – not really enough to support you both. It seems a pity that you should have to struggle with financial hardship when he’s only got another year to go.” I left a pause for her to think about that before adding, “Adam is aware of all this, of course. I think that’s why his mind seems made up to stay in Equatoria. He thinks you’ll both be happier here. Perhaps you should talk to him about it?”
Afterwards, when Efwa succeeded in convincing Adam not to leave Cambridge, and Hal was thanking me for my part in the affair, I told him that I hadn’t really done anything other than help Efwa to see her way a little more clearly. But I knew that wasn’t the case. I had set out intending to get the result that Hal wanted, whether it was what Adam wanted or not. And though I happily accepted Hal’s verdict that it was all done in the best interests of both Adam and Efwa, I was less sure of it than he was. But then who, at twenty, knows much about anything that matters in a swiftly changing world?
Adam and I flew back to England together near the end of that long vacation, sitting in silence throughout most of the flight. Did he suspect my involvement in Efwa’s change of heart? I don’t think so, because I had covered my tracks by letting her appear to reach her own conclusions. But not since the days preceding his breakdown had I known him so gloomy and reserved with me. He might have been flying into exile rather than returning to the privileged life of his college. And there had been more genuine warmth in Hal’s farewell to me than between the bluff father and his taciturn son.
As for Grace, there was such grief and wistfulness in her grey eyes as she waved us off at the airport that I think our departure can only have increased her restlessness. At one point towards the end of our stay, I even wondered whether she was making up her mind to come back home with us, but Hal did nothing to encourage the thought; and neither, it must be said, did I. On the contrary, in the small amount of time that she and I were left alone together, I tried to suggest that Hal drew much of his strength from having her there with him at his side. Whether she believed me or not is another matter. Whether or not I believed myself is another
matter too.
Somehow Adam got through our final year at Cambridge, visiting Efwa during the Christmas and Easter vacations. The high point of the year was Larry Stromberg’s production of The Tempest in a darkly panelled Jacobean hall, which looked more like an alchemical laboratory than an island. Adam’s elusive nature made him perfect casting for Ariel, and his was certainly the most exciting performance. My own role as Stephano made fewer demands, which is why I eventually came away with a better degree than either Adam or Larry. Larry was confident that they could make careers on the stage, so neither took the final exams with great seriousness. By contrast, I swotted into the small hours, knowing that even if I achieved an upper-second, my dad would want to know why I hadn’t taken a first.
Towards the end of term, never thinking for a moment that she would accept, I invited Marina to my college’s May Ball. As a buffer against rejection, I suggested that a bohemian artist such as she had become would probably have no interest in attending this bourgeois mating ritual, but I thought it worth a try. She came and appeared out of the room I’d rented for her in the Blue Boar, wearing the expensive midnight-blue dress which her father had bought for her birthday three years ago. When I told her that it looked stunning on her, she said, “It seemed a pity not to give it at least one outing.”
“You’ve never worn it before?”
“And probably won’t ever again.”
“Hal would love to see you in it.”
“Yes, but he never will.”
“Oh come on,” I protested, “I thought you’d have given up fighting him by now.”
“I have,” she answered, “but that doesn’t mean I have to please him.”
“Well, we don’t have to please anyone but ourselves tonight. Let’s enjoy it, shall we?”
“I mean to do just that.”
And she did – the champagne, the food, the dance band beating out quicksteps and foxtrots in the hall, the jazz combo in the marquee, the string quartet playing Mozart and Vivaldi in the cloisters, the tall stained glass of the chapel windows illuminated from inside. Marina and I were as relaxed in each other’s company as at any time since the night she’d come to my room at High Sugden – which is to say, of course, that she was more relaxed than me.
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