What Time Devours

by A. J. Hartley

“Yes, Mrs. Hughes,” Kumi managed. “Tea would be very nice.”

  “I’m sorry I told you not to come,” she said. “You couldn’t have helped and I was—you know—angry and confused.”

  “Of course,” said Thomas. “You had been diagnosed with—I mean—you were sick and . . .”

  “Cancer,” she said. “You have to be able to say it.”

  Thomas nodded, but said nothing.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I just had to tough it out alone for a bit. Sorry. It was stupid. And selfish.”

  “That’s crazy,” he answered. “And I wouldn’t have been any use anyway. Too—I don’t know—anxious.”

  “Still,” she said, “it would have been nice to have you there. But you know me, Tom: self-sufficient to a fault.”

  “So where are we?” he said.

  He wondered at his use of the word we as soon as he said it. It sounded wrong, flippant, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “I’m lucky that they caught it so early,” she said, and for a moment there was a haunted look in her eyes, a wild terror that peeped through and then went back under. Thomas saw it and recognized it. “It was just luck, really,” she continued. “They have me on these hormone-suppressant drugs and I’ll start radiation on Monday when I get back. No chemo, we think.”

  “Which means what?”

  “It’s good, Tom. It means things are going well. The chemo is what makes you really sick, so I’m glad I don’t have to do that, but my oncologist is sure we don’t need it right now. They’ll reassess after the radiation in about six weeks. They removed a couple of lymph nodes during the surgery, to be on the safe side, and I have to wear this sleeve thing on the plane; something to do with embolism. I didn’t completely understand all of it. That’s what having you there would have been good for. There’s so much information. I’m not sure I processed all of it.”

  She was starting to race, her voice rising in pitch, volume, and speed.

  “And they have me all marked up for the radiation. Little stickers and magic marker lines. I look like a nautical chart. They said they wanted to tattoo me, but I said no. They said that if I am really careful about how I wash, so that I don’t erase the lines or lose the little sticky . . . things . . . then it should be okay, but I have to be mapped for the radiation, and I don’t really know what it will be like, but they say there can be some burning and it’s just all so much to take in . . .”

  He held her again then, gripping as tightly as he had to the stone of Daniella Blackstone’s turret, holding on as if he might fall or—worse—as if she might.

  They lay on his bed all afternoon. She asked him if he wanted to see the scar under the dressing, and he said yes because he guessed she wanted him to see it, so he stared at it as if he were really looking and said it didn’t look so bad, though his knuckles were white where he gripped the bed frame.

  He asked her if she wanted to go out. Drive into Stratford and have a pint in the Dirty Duck, maybe meet up with Taylor Bradley.

  “How is he?” she asked.

  “Good, I think. Has a tenure-track position at some little college in Ohio. Still staging plays. Still struggling to get much written and less published, but he has a job.”

  “He’s not married, right?”

  “No.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “No one serious, I don’t think. He hasn’t mentioned anyone,” said Thomas. “But it’s been a long time. We’ve lost touch over the last ten years.”

  “That long?”

  “That long,” said Thomas. For a moment he said nothing, then added, “We’ve wasted so much time.”

  “Plenty more to come,” she said.

  He gave her a desperate, questioning look, and she stared him down till he nodded.

  “You remember when Taylor did that show?” she said. “What was it called?”

  “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” said Thomas, laughing. “Maybe the stupidest play I’ve ever seen.”

  “Funny though,” she said. “In parts.”

  “In parts,” he agreed.

  “You want to get something to eat?” she said.

  “You aren’t going to make sushi?”

  “I thought we’d work on my karate.”

  “I think I’ll pass,” he said.

  “I had been wondering about dropping that class—what with being too aggressive and all—and I’ll have to take a break from it for a while what with . . . everything . . . but now I think I’ll keep it up.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. If I’m going to be spending any time around you, I’ll probably need it,” she said. “Just try not to get shot till I have my black belt, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  They couldn’t make love without condoms—because of the hormone treatment and upcoming radiation, which would be lethal to a pregnancy—and Thomas didn’t have any. He couldn’t imagine going looking for any, particularly after that talk of doomed pregnancies, and neither of them felt the need for that kind of intimacy anyway.

  A part of him was glad when they decided to just lie there, because he felt the scar of her surgery like a knife in his own groin, and there was a voice in his head that was shrieking with anger against her body. Having sex would be like saying it was all okay, this love wrapped in flesh and bone. But it wasn’t okay. Because flesh failed. Always, inevitably, it failed, and so he resolved to hate it.

  She read his thoughts, or seemed to, and smiled at him with her sad, worried eyes, and kissed away his tears, till he felt guilty about making it about him, even as he knew that somehow made it easier.

  They drove into Kenilworth at her insistence and had dinner at a tandoori restaurant, where they split two big bottles of Kingfisher and gorged themselves on popadoms and paratha with mango chutney so that by the time their main courses arrived, they were full. They boxed up their chicken and naan to take back to the hotel, even though they had no fridge.

  “Midnight snack, maybe,” said Kumi.

  “Maybe,” Thomas said, taking her hand.

  Back in his room, they watched soccer on TV, then moved between championship darts, some oppressively serious world news, and an inane game show. Thomas supplied ironic commentary because it made her laugh, and whenever he started drifting back toward her health, she shushed him pleasantly.

  “Let’s just watch,” she said.

  Then he would nod, too emphatically, and push it all from his mind as best he could, which usually meant merely not talking about it. She held his hand, and rested her head against his shoulder, and they lay there till it began to get light and Thomas realized that she had fallen asleep.

  After breakfast they went walking through the castle ruins, talking about what she called his “case.” Thomas went over everything he knew and suspected, and she listened and nodded, occasionally asking questions to show she was paying attention.

  “When it’s all done,” she said. “Perhaps you could come to see me in Tokyo.”

  “I’ll come back with you right now . . . ,” he began.

  “No,” she said, flat. “You have something to do here. It’s important. You aren’t responsible for David Escolme’s death, whatever you think, but if you can help bring his killer to justice, that’s a good thing. And you have to find that play.”

  “I could come to the airport and see if there’s a seat on the plane . . .”

  “I’ll be back at work, Tom,” she said. “The radiation only takes about twenty minutes a day and I’m scheduled to do it before I go to the office. If you came out now you’d be sitting in my tiny apartment ministering to me—unnecessarily—and going crazy. In two days you’d be ranting about Japanese politics, protectionism, xenophobia, and the denial of World War Two atrocities. In the end, I’d have to kill you.”

  He smiled.

  “And besides,” she added, “you want to find that play.”

  “It’s not the play that’s important . . .”

  “Sure it is, Tom,” she said. “From
the moment you first mentioned it, I could hear it in your voice. If the play is out there, you want to be the one to find it. I don’t blame you. It would be a great thing to do.”

  “It seems sort of stupid now.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s not. I love to see you excited about something, especially now. And the world needs all the comedy it can get.”

  “Even Shakespearean comedy?”

  “Especially that,” she said. “Especially now. So.”

  After that she packed her single bag and Thomas drove her to the railway station.

  “Soon,” he said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  “Don’t come to the platform,” she said. “That’s just too hard. I’m going to go now. I’ll call you when I get back.”

  “I’ll see you soon,” he said, again. “And we won’t waste any more time apart.”

  “It’ll be okay, Tom,” she said. “They say that if you’re going to get cancer these days, breast cancer is the one to get.”

  “Yes,” said Thomas. “You really won the lottery on that one.”

  She laughed then, a real laugh.

  “Bye, Tom,” she said.

  After she had gone, and he was negotiating the tight Kenilworth streets with their maddening one-way system, he switched on the radio to drown out his own thoughts. Paul Simon was singing about taking two bodies and twirling them into one, hearts and bones binding together. Inseparable.

  The words of the song—the anguished, joyous, tragic, almost Shakespearean phrase—bounced around in Thomas’s head so that he had to pull over and sit with his head down, until he could see to drive.

  CHAPTER 69

  Thomas had been planning to enter the Shakespeare Institute through the French windows at the back, but he was lucky, for once. A senior scholar was exiting just as he crossed the street. Thomas called to him to hold the door and dashed over.

  He had been inside no more then twenty seconds when she arrived, bearing down on him like an elderly vulture in pince-nez and a floral print dress. Mrs. Covington, local historian and guardian of the institute’s hallowed halls. For a moment he pretended he hadn’t seen her and studied a sign-up sheet for a minibus trip to the neighboring Warwick Castle. Among the names of the conference delegates on the list were Katrina Barker and Randall Dagenhart.

  “May I help . . . ?” Mrs. Covington began. “Ah,” she concluded, recognizing him.

  “Hi,” said Thomas, inadequately.

  “The American gentleman who suggested that I did not wish to share the mysteries of literary scholarship with the great unwashed.”

  “You remembered,” he said, beaming. “I’m flattered.”

  “You shouldn’t be,” she said, staring down her beaklike nose at him from heavily lidded eyes. “That excursion is for conference delegates only.”

  A few days earlier, Thomas would have found this maddening, but Kumi’s visit had eased his mind or—at the very least—reset his priorities.

  “Yes, I see that,” Thomas said, “and I’d hate to negatively impact your day, so let’s get through this as quickly as possible, shall we?”

  “The castle tour is out of the question, I’m afraid, and if you want to sit in on a seminar, you’ll need a pass or a friend who will chaperone you.”

  “Because not having a pass means I’m probably here to torch the place,” Thomas said, still smiling.

  “People who use impact as a verb are capable of anything,” she remarked. “And the word is naturally trochaic, not iambic: IMpact, not imPACT.”

  He laughed then, because it was the kind of thing he might have said in class.

  “That’s good, Mrs. Covington,” he said. “But here’s the thing. I don’t actually need to get into the institute, and I’m all castled out.”

  Her face clouded.

  “Then what are you doing here? I’m not running messages to your acquaintances like some lackey . . .”

  “No,” he said. “Of course not. I actually came to see you.”

  That stopped her. She stared at him, her mouth open, speechless, and for the briefest of moments she looked like a completely different person.

  “Me?” she said.

  “How long have you worked here, Mrs. Covington?”

  “Thirty-five years in October,” she said, proud of the fact.

  “Could I buy you a cup of tea?” Thomas said. “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. Think of it as local history.”

  Stratford was crawling with tearooms. Mrs. Covington selected Benson’s on Bard Walk and stalked there. She was tall and angular and there was something mechanical about her movements, but the woman had a sharpness and vigor that Thomas couldn’t help liking. Even so, he sensed that she felt at sea in this new relationship, and there was a wariness about her that she was clearly unused to.

  “I’m not a gossip, Mr. Knight,” she said, as soon as she had ordered her pot of Earl Grey and a scone.

  “I never thought you would be,” Thomas answered, honestly. “And besides, my first question is about the distant past, not the recent.”

  She eyed him, saying nothing.

  “Hamstead Marshall House,” he said. “It was a little south of here in west Berkshire, near Newberry.”

  “Hamstead Marshall Park,” she said. “Yes, I know it. Burned down in 1718, I believe. It was actually a series of houses. One of the latest incarnations was a Tudor manor built for Thomas Parry that was probably destroyed during the civil war, like Kenilworth Castle. Another house was built on the estate in the late seventeenth century by the Earl of Craven. He modeled it on Heidelberg Castle as a gift for the exiled Queen of Bohemia, Elizabeth, with whom he had fallen in love, but she died before the house was built. It burned down shortly thereafter. The family moved to Ben-ham Park, and the Hamstead Marshall site has been derelict ever since.”

  Thomas gazed at her. The woman was an encyclopedia.

  “Mrs. Covington,” he said, “you’re a marvel.”

  She colored, muttering about having had an “interest in such things since girlhood.”

  “But to be able to carry all that around in your head!” Thomas exclaimed. “Most academics would kill for that kind of memory.”

  “You sound like Professor Dagenhart,” she said, waving the compliment away. “I’ve been telling him stories like this for thirty years and he never stops treating me like the Delphic oracle. When you live in a place all your life, you know it, and that’s all there is to it. And reading, of course. One doesn’t have to be a professor to like books.”

  “I was a student of Dagenhart’s,” said Thomas. “In Boston.”

  “Were you indeed?” she said, looking him up and down as if she had never seen him before.

  “I didn’t know him well, and he was constantly disappearing to come here.”

  “Every summer,” she nodded. “He’s become something of an institution himself. First person I ever knew with a laptop computer. He has a newer model now, but he leaves it in the institute’s reading room constantly, usually switched on. Doesn’t seem to worry about it being stolen. I can’t decide if I think him admirably principled or woefully misguided. I hate to say it, and I know it sounds like mindless sentimentality, but I think the world as a whole is a sight more wicked than it was when I was young.”

  “How does Professor Dagenhart know Elsbeth Church?”

  For a second she looked baffled. Then it came to her.

  “Oh, the novelist! Yes, he would, wouldn’t he? Through Daniella, I suppose.”

  “Blackstone?” said Thomas, surprised.

  “Oh, yes,” she said breezily. “They knew each other for years.”

  “Intimately?”

  “Mr. Knight, I told you I was no gossip. I thought you wanted to hear about Hamstead Marshall Park.”

  “Yes,” said Thomas, adjusting. “Could the place be considered a shrine of some kind?”

  “In what sense?” she said, brisk and hawklike again.

  “I don’t know,” s
aid Thomas, trying to find the words. “Is there something about its history that might inspire—I don’t know—nostalgia, devotion, strong personal feeling of some kind?”

  “I suppose the story of the earl and his love might be that,” she said, “and there is the legend about the Tudor house, though there’s probably nothing to it.”

  “What legend?”

  “It’s completely unverifiable, and is probably a local version of a story from elsewhere . . .”

  “Your interest in historical accuracy has been duly noted,” said Thomas. “What’s the legend?”

  CHAPTER 70

  Mrs. Covington leaned forward and her eyes grew brighter. It wasn’t just that she was flattered by his interest, she was thrilled by the prospect of telling the story itself.

  “I said that the Tudor manor was built for Thomas Parry,” she began.“It is said that the gift of the estate was made by Queen Elizabeth herself and was, perhaps, a very particular kind of reward. Elizabeth, as you know, made much of her status as the Virgin Queen. It was a useful political image that drew on Greek and Roman mythology—Artemis and Diana, goddesses of the moon—and, most importantly, on the iconography of Catholicism. The country was nominally Protestant, but that was a very recent change, and even for those who embraced the new religion there was a lot about the old that they missed. So Elizabeth made herself a kind of royal Virgin Mary. In doing so she neatly tied her secular authority to the divine in a way that protected her from a lot of complaints from subjects who would prefer to be ruled by a man.

  “Of course, the issue of her virginity was also very much about her refusal to give up England to a foreign power. If she married, the kingdom would become property of her husband, and with England at war with every Catholic power in Europe, that could spell disaster. So you can imagine how much damage could have been done if it got out that she was not actually a virgin at all, that she had, in fact, already had a child.”

  Thomas stared at her, feeling the tension and excitement of her narrative.